Thursday 03/04/08 Blood Red Shoes @ The Zodiac, Oxford

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In music land, bands usually don’t breach the ‘we’ve been together for two years’ barrier without at least one album to their name. However, Blood Red Shoes are the exception to that rule. This is their debut album tour (aptly named ‘Box of Secrets’) and the band has been marching through town after town on this monster steam train. Tonight, after what they tell us has been an insanely mental couple of previous gigs, they drop in on Oxford.

Random drone noise bursts out of the speakers; and we’re all standing, anticipating, and waiting for the Shoes’ stage invasion. Only, it doesn’t come. Drone. Drone. Drone. Drone. On and on. And on. And on. And on. And on. (You get the picture!) But still no Shoes. It is a good five minutes of droning, and indeed groaning for many of us, until they finally come on stage. But it continues; the sound appears so fucked they can’t turn the damn backing track off. It’s so loud that it’s like your blackboard ears are being scratched at by the sharpest of fingernails; it feels like an eternity (but obviously isn’t).

Moving swiftly on, because eventually the sound guys manage to pull it together and the band come back on stage, having stood like bewildered animals stage side for a good few minutes. Their (arguably) most famous track, ‘It’s Getting Boring by the Sea’ blasts out from the speakers; it’s loud and rapacious and is all together something good. They play ‘Doesn’t Matter Much’ and Laura-Mary's guitar is fast and pounding and loud; Stephen’s vocals digress from his diaphragm. Children mosh in the middling pit (then again everyone looks like children to me these days). Some people think it’s funny to hit each other (I must be old). At some point during the set, the Shoes tell the crowd to feel free to disregard the barriers (there for their safety); the band are pissed and angry and those moshing kids are their release. New single ‘Say Something, Say Anything’ slithers from the speakers, an obvious homage to the northern indie (Futureheads, Maximo Park, etc) if we ever heard one. Even though the band can’t hear themselves, thereby some of their unison vocals are a bit out, there’s no denying that they are a band that can play through adversity. Or you would think, until this happens...

For the record, spawning one big, fat, hissy fit during the middle of your gig is not going to make you too popular, especially if you decide to strut off stage without warning and abandon your crowd. Unfortunately it doesn’t make much difference how awesome you tell the audience they are, or how great they’ve been, and all that other bullshit; it’s not going to change the fact that tonight’s crowd are playing a waiting game. Waiting for the band to play; waiting for the droning to stop; waiting for them to come back on stage. Well, shit happens.

They do eventually return to play a few more songs. But all this stopping and starting has (personally) made me feel indifferent to their efforts. More unnecessary drone noise was played in the interim, and I’m thinking ‘this is a painful way to die’. Blood Red Shoes probably could’ve pulled this out of disaster. Okay, it must be annoying to not be able to hear yourselves; we sympathise, we really do; but with as many brilliant tracks in their oeuvre, surely made to be played live, you’d have thought really that they’d battle through. It’s not their fault if the sound is fucked but hissy fits aren’t big, nor clever. Seeing them at Truck last year (where they were the best band of the festival, bar none) they’d have done well to ‘Take The Weight’ of this small trauma because despite their wishing, they are ‘Someone Better’.