Blood Red Shoes - Ghosts On Tape (Velveteen)

When a band whose reputation isn’t exactly that of indie lightweights describe their latest album as their ‘heaviest record”, you could be forgiven for expecting full-blown post industrialism, or some eardrum challenging variation. Ghosts On Tape isn’t really like that, although across its 11 tracks there seems to be little room for anything very lighthearted or vaguely humorous. Blood Red Shoes aren’t giving any ground away on their fifth studio release.

Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell have been making music as a Power Duo for very nearly two decades and their music today is an amalgam of blues rock and electronica, cranked up and distorted and given a grimy twist of bleakly cynical lyric themes, although what Blood Red Shoes are really good with is their take on old-school glam rock stomp, such as second track Morbid Fascination and second from last number I Lose Whatever I Own. The songs are almost buried under layers of reverb and distortion and aside from the vocals everything sounds programmed, including the drums, giving the songs the necessary volition that they require. The path of Glam Rock is a well-trodden one, and it’s possible to hear the influences of Depeche Mode and Goldfrapp alongside the bluesy guitar grind and thudding rhythms, the interspersed arpeggios, and the whispered vocals that characterise Ghosts On Tape.