The Long Blondes’ last album wasn’t bad, I thought. There were some excellent, catchy indie-pop songs with plenty of bounce and a bit of wit and sparkle to elevate them above the crowd, but all in all it was a decent album rather than a really good one.
This is one step down from that. There are a few decent songs – The Couples, Guilt, Century – but the album tails off horribly after that and limps across the finish line with barely enough life left in it to raise a whistle.
They’ve gone a bit electro-disco, although they’ve always sounded a little like Blondie, and the sound isn’t too bad. The problem is the tunes. Their previous output was straight from a pretty well-established template, but the catchy melodies they were able to produce made the difference. In the case of Couples, the template may have changed, but it is template-rock nonetheless, and the tunes don’t cut the mustard. This album does not make me feel like dancing or even tapping my feet, and for something so formulaic that is the one thing it must do.
The Long Blondes – The Couples
The Long Blondes – Guilt
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I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone with this podcast. Firstly, I am throwing in a couple of songs that I wanted to put on the Contrast Podcast episode entitled Young a few weeks ago. I was away at my brother’s wedding at the time, and I never got the chance so here they are.
Secondly, a good while ago a regular reader of mine called Allen Lulu tagged me with one of these internetty meme thingies whereby you write about the music that was in the charts the year you turned 18. Well for me that year was 1993, but the chart music was abysmal, so I couldn’t possibly do that to you. Instead I had a look at what I was listening to myself from that year and came across so many excellent old songs I haven’t heard for ages that a quick post turned into an entire podcast. And this is that podcast – me at age 18.
Toadcast #9 – The Folly of Youth
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1. The Spin Doctors – Two Princes (03.21)
2. Stereo MCs – Connected (09.08)
3. Radiohead – Anyone Can Play Guitar (13.41)
4. Stone Temple Pilots – Plush (17.30)
5. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Loverman (25.12)
6. Levellers – This Garden (31.29)
7. James – Five-O (38.24)
8. The Long Blondes – Once & Never Again (6Music Acoustic Session) (43.12)
9. Gogol Bordello – Never Want to be Young Again (49.48)
10. The Mathletes – Linger (Cranberries Cover) (55.27)
11. Pearl Jam – Daughter (57.45)
12. Blind Melon – No Rain (63.19)
13. Soul Asylum – New World (67.57)
14. The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You (71.50)
15. Portishead – Mysterons (75.24)
16. Engine Alley – Song For Someone (82.26)
Well, I rather wrote The Long Blondes off as a bit of a lightweight, frivolous flash in the pan when they first emerged. But the more I hear of their debut album and the more I watch Beth Ditto thundering pendulously about like some freakish extra from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the more grateful I am that there is a decent female-fronted indie rock group out there who wield their guitars with a bit of purpose and who are quite definitely not the fucking Gossip.
The Long Blondes – The Unbearable Lightness of Building
