Interview: Long Blondes

Screetch Louder, drummer and general curly haired extraordinaire in Sheffield’s the Long Blondes, has a cough. Unfortunately, so do I, meaning our entire conversation is punctuated with sudden coughing attacks on both our parts. Then he asks us to give him a minute because, “my cat’s just jumping on my back.”

But ailments aside, Screech is well. The Long Blondes are touring their new album, ‘Couples’, the tracks from which seem to be going down well live so far. “We did a bunch of secret gigs under a pretend name to try out the new material and we wanted to keep it quite low-key, to keep the pressure off us and just have a bit of a warm-up, because we haven’t really done any gigs for about six months. All the new songs seemed very positively received.”

As anyone who’s heard the new album will know, the band’s sound has progressed wonderfully. New electro beats intertwine with old lyrical themes. ‘Couples’ still sounds like the Long Blondes, but it’s the slightly edgier, more experienced older sister to their last album (‘Someone To Drive You Home’). “It still sounds like us, but like us trying to push things a bit, which is what we wanted to do.”

Teenage girl dramas have become the relationship problems of twenty-something women. This may be due to internal band strife: “There used to be couples in our band and then we split up, so it is to an extent like a break-up record”. A first time listener certainly shouldn’t expect an album of ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’ style sob-stories though – ‘Couples’ describes the many emotions associated with breaking up with someone that run far deeper than loneliness.  Some tracks “aren’t as lyrically obvious” as this, or “as narrative as the songs were in the past”, and Screech tells me that the band made a conscious effort to “get out of that comfort zone, do things a bit differently and see what would happen when we were writing.” Ultimately, they “kind of wanted to move on a bit.” They have certainly achieved that.

A particularly admirable aspect of the record is the way that it highlights what really goes on in the lives of people in relationships, just as ‘Someone To Drive You Home’ highlights what really goes on in the lives of single people. “The way that the lyrics deal with relationships has always been a strong point for us that’s helped us connect with the audience, largely due to the fact that ‘Dorian writes a lot of the lyrics and does a very good job of honestly and openly communicating with people about the complications of human relationships.”

‘Century’, the first single from ‘Couples’, is an electropop masterpiece that sounds like ‘Destroy Everything You Touch’ by Ladytron. Apparently other people have mentioned similarities on the album to this band, and Screech is quite flattered by it: “It’s a nice comparison. I always quite liked Ladytron and felt they were a bit underrated.”

A standout track from the album is ‘Erin O’Connor’, which features the brilliant line “lie back and think of Erin O’Connor”.  As witty as this is, it seems there may be motives other than providing comedy: “I think Dorian just wrote that because he really fancies her and hopes that if she realises she’s got a song about her she might give him a ring or something, like an attempt to make contact with her without actually having to contact her! He claims that’s not true, but I think he’s lying!” We discuss O’Connor’s recent grilling in Guardian Weekend’s Q&A, where she admitted that she is partial to crisp sandwiches. I did not have her down as a crisp-sandwich kind of woman, but according to Screech, “everyone secretly likes crisp sandwiches, they’re a bit of a guilty pleasure.”

As well as their sound, the band’s technical ability has evolved since their previous record. Screech’s drumming in particular has a totally different dynamic; driving and Krautrock-style, it carries the songs forward rather than slipping into the background of them. “It’s partly because I’m a better drummer now, but also I’m more confident at trying to get my own influences in there.” Kate Jackson’s voice has matured enormously: “she’s got better as a singer, she’s more confident, she’s become more supple.”

Before we say goodbye, I enquire about Screech’s favourite city to gig in. Apparently, “Manchester has always been a really good place to play for us, it’s a really good town and we’ve always gone down really well there. It’s always completely crazy and completely worth it.” The Long Blondes love their hometown and they love other people’s too. It’s refreshing to see this level of enthusiasm in a band - live, in conversation, or on record.