England’s Blood Red Shoes like to do things the DIY way. While taking their name from Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire musical, of all places, the duo draw on punk, blues, and metal for their sound. For album number four, they moved to Berlin and rented a recording studio. Over the course of six months, they wrote and recorded whenever the feeling struck them, “with nobody to answer to except ourselves,” as drummer Steven Ansell puts it.
That kind of creative isolation usually results in pretty bloated music, but Blood Red Shoes is the exact opposite. It’s a lean and mean record, energetically bouncing between Ansell and Laura-Mary Carter. Both of the members sing, and on “An Animal,” Ansell takes the lead while furiously pounding the drums. It’s proof positive of the power of the creative spark, no matter where or how you capture it.
