Visualize the rock outfit Blood Red Shoes and most refer back to THAT photo, you know the print of yellow-tinged girl/boy band rather naked. While it’s always interesting to interview a band wonderfully starkers, the duo arrived superbly clothed and mouthy for SS’s Gemma Dempster. Known for their dedicated touring and beast debut Box Of Secrets still sneaking London pub airplay, the gristly “I can actually grow stubble and it doesn’t take about a week” Steve Ansell and beauty Laura-Mary Carter contemplate their intense five year career; from having nipples the same size as Jack Barnett (These New Puritans), drunkenly singing ‘Chelsea Dagger’ or almost tearing the band apart with their dark second record Fire Like This. Oh, and they entered in Project Recycle!

‘IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN’ AND THE NEAR SPLIT

Steve Ansell (vocals, drums): I think it was written at a time where we were quite panicky and a little bit psychotic. It’s actually us mentally unraveling in song! When you get stuck in a routine, like trying to escape something that overwhelms you...you are trapped, climbing the walls, going fucking crazy. We did nearly break up the band trying to record some of the songs. We just put ourselves under loads of pressure to write this amazing next record, we just got so convinced we just lost our minds trying to focus too hard on it.
Laura-Mary Carter(vocals, guitar): [So] we were like, “let’s just write a record!”
Steve: Basically we were at a point where it completely destroyed our band from the inside out...
Laura: Steve always dramatizes it.
Steve: When we went to Cornwall, I thought that was the end of our band!
Laura: You always think that.
Steve: At the time, that’s what it felt like. Then we came back from the brink, and then fucking sorted it.
Laura: We sound like every other band...

MAKING MUSIC FOREVER

Steve: I think we will both be making music ‘til someone puts us in the ground. I think our band will survive at least five years. I’m putting my money on the table there, we’ve done five years, and we can do another five! We didn’t even make an album until we did five hundred gigs... we didn’t try to rush into it.
Laura: We want to do stuff like an instrumental album, that maybe won’t be Blood Red Shoes but it’s us two just with other instruments. We want to experiment more now, and use the fact that our job is being in a band full time. We’ve definitely got to the point where we’ve got that freedom.
Steve: [We] understand what a band is now. When you start you just start writing some songs, and all this other shit comes into play, like you realize what it means to be around someone all the time on tour, the factors that perfect how the band does and the pressures being in the band. We’ve got to the point where we can control stuff now we know more about what the hell we are doing than three years ago.

REMEMBERING BOX OF SECRETS

Steve: We actually played some of our first records and we realized we sounded like little children. We don’t sound like the same people. There are certain things we’d never do now. It’s really funny because I didn’t realize how much we’ve changed until I heard them back to back. We’ve put songs in the set against our new songs and we were like “fucking hell!” It’s the same as when you look back on yourself thinking “What on earth was I wearing?”, you don’t think you were a dickhead, you just think it’s funny. It’s interesting.
Laura: Some people [have commented]: “BRS, in the new album, haven’t progressed at all”.
Steve: A few people said that? I’m gonna send shit in a bag.

THE TEENAGER YEARS

Steve: We were pretty much the same as we are now if anything we came full circle, I listen to the same shit I listened to when I was fourteen. I was the same kind of person, I hated everything and I was always really sarcastic. With our band, I think that’s what we connected on; we both came back to making stuff we were into.
Laura: I did grow up in Staines though so there’s always a bit of chav in me.
Steve: On that basis, there’s always a bit of small town, conservative, [in me] like where The Feeling came from. I should really want to make a soft rock record.
Laura: Ha, I lived in the hood, yeah.
Steve: You’ll be making an urban record!

COURTNEY LOVE

Steve: (points to picture of Larrikin Love ex-guitarist, Micko Larkin) I told you this fucker’s lost weight; he’s in Courtney Love’s band.
Laura: I’m really upset with Courtney Love. I’ve loved her for many years, and she’s basically one of my biggest inspirations growing up. I got the chance to ask her a question for CLASH magazine. It was like “What female musician inspired you?”
SS: Who did she say?
Laura: Florence and the Machine.
SS: Must’ve been a joke surely?
Steve: That’s what everyone was like, “She’s being sarcastic”.
Laura: So basically she thinks that Florence and the Machine is an inspiration, not anyone like from the history of music that is actually good, actually writes lyrics. I was really upset. It made me feel like I wish I’d never asked!

CATCHING ON FIRE IN ‘LIGHT IT UP’ VIDEO

Laura: There’s a bit where in that video my guitar doesn’t look like it’s really on fire where I’m holding it because they were filming him [Steve]. When it was really on fire, it got out of control and I was like “SHIT”. While they were like “take it off, take it off!” my fur coat almost went up! They only did it in one shot.
Steve: I was actually really enjoying it, because I was FUCKING FREEZING!
SS: Your face did look rather pink…
Steve: It was so cold I drank a whole bottle of Jack Daniels, just to stay warm. So I was completely shitfaced. Everyone was like “You look really pink on your nose”. I don’t know if that is the temperature or the litre of Jack.

THAT PHOTO AND MUSIC TODAY

Steve: The image just didn’t look like an angry aggressive band which is what our first record sounds like. Just looks like a fashion shot. We were actually talking about in music these days, how everyone sounds like a new age band. Mumford and Sons. What’s that? Why are people who are 21 years old making music that sounds like your fucking granddad? You should be making pissed off music, upsetting parents, be turning over cars and setting them on fire. You should not be making inoffensive “nice” huggy music that you can have with a Cup A Soup on Sunday. Fuck off…
Laura: It’s really weird what is going on and it’s a recession.
Steve: Nobody has any attitude, everybody is nice and happy. We’re completely out of sequence with everyone. Everyone’s mental! Why does nobody care? There’s lots of conformist music…Gallows were supposed to be this big punk band that changed everything. Then they came out with another record that was rubbish. When their first record was better, before anyone had even heard of them, they got loads of hype. They could have made a really big difference. And then they just didn’t. All the attention fucked them up.

BLINDNESS IN ‘COLOUR’S FADE’

Laura: It sounds like we were on lots of acid…
Steve: I don’t really like explaining songs because half the time, I don’t know. I can see some things in the lyrics now and know what they meant better than when we wrote them.
Laura: I think we were listening to Queens of the Stone Age.
Steve: That song is quite visual to me. The video fits very well. It’s kind of lazy, lost, and confused. I really want to hear it at a club. It’s really not right for a club, but if you took loads of ecstasy it would sound really cool. It is one simple drumbeat...it’s like techno the whole way through.

BRITISH JOURNALISTS

Steve: You know you are honestly the only person in England who asks us about our lyrics that I can remember. We spent twenty minutes slagging off English journalists just before we got here. We did a press tour....they want to find out something “cool”, if we are sleeping together. Want to know the scoop. No one wants to know what the song means, I think you are actually the first fucking person… you win!
SS: I win! I win what?
Steve: We should give you a trophy for being the first one able to think! What’s funny is as soon as someone asked about our music; we don’t know what the fuck to say.

Words: Gemma Dempster
Photography: Stuart Leech