English alternative rock duo Blood Red Shoes are coming to Prague as part of their European Tour 2014. The Brighton-based band, composed of Laura-Mary Carter on guitar and Steven Ansell on drums, have been rocking since late 2004. They took their name from a Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire musical, in which Ginger Rogers practiced so much for her role that she turned her white dancing shoes red with blood. Blood Red Shoes are now touring with 24 shows in 10 European countries to promote their new self-titled album that was released in March 2014.
Blood Red Shoes is the duo's fourth album and it features 12 tracks, including the last single "An Animal." The release of the album was preceded by the Online Deals single "A Perfect Mess." The song was made available on Dec. 1, 2013 on the band's website after 10 QR codes were found by fans in different cities across the world.
Blood Red Shoes was produced and recorded by the duo alone during six months in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, with no sound engineers, A&R people or producers. "It came out as our rawest, heaviest, sexiest and most confident sounding record so far," Steve Ansell told the media when the album was announced.
Barry Nicolson in music magazine NME said that the album is "probably the duo's most satisfying effort to date." He added that however the duo is best at playing live and the album doesn't quite capture the tooth-and-claw ferocity of that experience.
Jon Clark in the music webzine Drowned in Sound agreed about the album. "Blood Red Shoes is a confident, swaggering, riff-heavy barrage that is no longer the work of a band with something to prove: it's the work of a band who have proved it already."
According to published set lists, the concert will feature about 18 songs, mainly from the new album but also featuring prominent singles from the previous three works including, typically, "Say Something, Say Anything," "I Wish I Was Someone Better," "This Is Not For You" and "Light It Up."
The European dates of the tour will be supported by The Wytches, an English three-piece surf-psych band based in Brighton. After 11 concerts in the United Kingdom in May, Blood Red Shoes will move to North America for the second leg of their 2014 tour, featuring 20 shows in Canada and the States, before heading back to Europe to take part in two music festivals in Germany and Spain.
