The fourth LP from the Brighton duo Blood Red Shoes leaves the listener asking the same simple question as their previous releases have – how the hell can two people make so much noise?

‘Blood Red Shoes’ shows just how much the duo of Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell have benefited from their rigorous and seemingly endless touring schedule.  Recorded in Berlin during a break from touring, the self-prduced album’s 12 tracks are laced with explosive riffs that would make even the hardest rock bands envious.

As soon as the opening riff of Welcome Home explodes from your speakers, it’s clear that the album will follow suit, charging in to making up for everything that the band’s last release, ‘In Time To Voices’, failed to do. All 12 tracks are raw, rowdy and punchy, which is exactly what you’d expect from a Blood Red Shoes album.

An Animal is a rip-roaring track featuring heavily distorted guitar, catchy hooks and a booming chorus to show that they mean business this time around. Ansell does much more singing on this album, as evident on the back and forth shouting vocals in The Perfect Mess, coupled with screeching guitar and intensive drumming. But the high point of the vocally strong tracks comes from Grey Smoke, which features Carter’s sultry vocals that craft a certain kind of alluring malevolence.

On tracks like Cigarettes in the Dark and Stranger however, the explosiveness calms to a brooding hush, led by less angsty guitar work and drums, but still fitting in to the edge-of-your-seat anticipation that they deliver so well throughout the album.

‘Blood Red Shoes’ delivers everything you’d expect from the duo, but still manages to reinvent itself through well thought out riffs, a fantastic blend of vocals, and drumming that surely destroyed more than one kit during the recording sessions.