The Long Blondes

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The Long Blondes
Origin	Sheffield, Yorkshire
Genres	Indie rock, Indie pop, Punk

The Long Blondes are a 5-piece indie rock band from Sheffield in Yorkshire. They have a large underground following, with emphasis on their "glamorous punk" image, as coined by front-woman Kate Jackson. Jackson was featured in The Guardian's style section and the NME cool list, moving from 36 in 2005 to 7 in 2006. When questioned about her place in the NME list by The Guardian, Jackson remarked "Probably because they didn't have enough girls. It was so overrun with boring boys, they needed someone to bring a touch of glamour."^[1]

1 Style
2 Music
3 Band members
4 Discography
- 4.1 Albums
- 4.2 Singles
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Style

The Long Blondes' songs reflect a number of influences, including 60's pop, Buzzcocks, The Ramones, post-punk and New Wave. The prominence of these various influences varies from song to song. Jackson's vocals have been compared to Ari Up of The Slits, Deborah Harry of Blondie and those of The Au Pairs. Dorian Cox's backing vocals are also very similar to those of Jarvis Cocker. The music features angular guitars and prominent bass guitar lines. However, the band themselves claim somewhat more eclectic influences than their sound suggests, citing Burt Bacharach, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Chinn and Chapman, and Stock, Aitken and Waterman as influences. The band gained notoriety early on in their career for their bold proclamation "We do not listen to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or Bob Dylan. We chose an instrument each and learnt to play it." This quote was first published on their website, and was seen as a comment on the derivative nature of the contemporary music scene.

[edit] Music

On April 13, 2006 they signed to Rough Trade Records [1] and recorded their long-awaited debut album, Someone To Drive You Home over the summer ready for its release on November 6. They worked with producer Steve Mackey on the album, who has previously worked with Pulp. The album was preceded by their second single for the label, "Once and Never Again", which was released on October 23rd and debuted at number 30 in the UK singles chart [2]. In June 2006 they released their first single for the label, "Weekend Without Makeup", which reached number 28. They appeared at a number of UK festivals over summer 2006, including the Carling Weekend, Leicester's Summer Sundae and Ireland's Electric Picnic.

[edit] Band members

Dorian Cox - Lead guitar and keyboards.
Reenie Hollis - Bass guitar and backing vocals
Emma Chaplin - Rhythm guitar, Keyboards and backing vocals
Kate Jackson - Lead vocals
Screech Louder - Drums

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

Someone To Drive You Home - Rough Trade (November 6th) (UK #44)

[edit] Singles

Autonomy Boy (on the Angular Recording Corporation compilation: Rip Off Your Labels) - Angular Recording Corporation
Autonomy Boy / Long Blonde (split 7" with The Boyfriends) - Filthy Little Angels
New Idols / Long Blonde - Thee Sheffield Phonographic Corporation
Giddy Stratospheres (b/w Polly and Darts) - Angular Recording Corporation
Giddy Stratospheres" (12" EP) - What's Your Rupture?
Appropriation (By Any Other Name) (b/w My Heart is Out of Bounds, Lust in the Movies & Peterborough) - Angular Recording Corporation
Separated By Motorways (b/w Big Infatuation) - Good and Evil
Weekend Without Makeup (b/w Fulwood Babylon) - Rough Trade (UK #28)
Once and Never Again - Rough Trade (UK #30)