When lead Long Blonde Kate Jackson sang "I'd rather just stay indoors" on her group's full-blooded debut LP, Someone to Drive You Home, the shrugging sentiment was buoyed by dollops of surging guitar pop. And while the album flirted with its fair share of romantic misery, the accompanying music offered a smorgasbord of high-end giddiness. Obsessed with the swooning glamor of old Hollywood, Jackson played her lovelorn roles with plucky aplomb on Home-- from valiant big sister to bitter ex-lover to cutthroat femme fatale-- never languishing in one persona for too long. The singer might resign herself to nights filled with nothing but gin and Ava Gardner on Thursday, only to be seen flipping huge eyelashes toward a best friend's beau at the local watering hole on Friday. The combination of her sensual blare, guitarist-lyricist Dorian Cox's Pulp-y kitchen sink stories, and the group's hi-hat'n'hooks attack proved a welcome twist on the tiresome post-punk trend; when most bands looked to Factory staples to inform their danceable rock styles, this Sheffield clan came off like sly Postcard descendants with a flair for vintage shawls and berets. The one-time Best Unsigned Band in Britain offered sexy, theatrical escapism for the thrift store set, who joyfully returned the favor with knowing nods and the odd herky-jerky twist moves.
Their sophomore effort won't get the cool kids as loose, which is ironic since it's designed for the dance floor. "Couples" is a darker affair, with much of the band's jittering upstrokes dismissed in favor of synth squelches and airless grooves. And this time, when Jackson threatens to spend weeks on the couch, it doesn't sound like a mere flight of youthful fancy. "I used to come here to have a good time but I can feel like this at home," she laments on the title track, alone and despondent in the corner of the bar. In contrast to Home, which often found the singer looking at relationships from the outside with wide-eyed yearning, "Couples" deals more with the complications that arise from within troubled pairs.
The change in perception is likely a byproduct of age -- and the fact that two inter-band couples broke up since Home's release probably played a part as well. So while the songwriting is less lively, it still remains relatively sharp as chief lyricist Cox delves into the uglier depths of relationship drama. "Guilt" has Jackson trying to drop a persistent suitor while sticking with her boyfriend-- "guilt has nothing to do with it," she tells her lover, though the plain existence of the song would suggest otherwise. "Here Comes the Serious Bit" and "Erin O'Connor" take on the topic of sex with bleary, bloodshot eyes; the former's "serious bit" refers to the tenuous line between friends and more-than-friends, and the latter's titular British model stands in as a mask for a woman trying to gloss over her infidelities. For a band so adept at bringing the frivolities of infatuation to a boil, doomed affairs like the one told in "I Liked the Boys" (about a bored housewife who dreams about the one that got away) don't take advantage of their most potent powers. Along with the dour new outlook, producer Erol Alkan also acts as a stymieing force as he quantizes "Couples" into beat-based boxes that suck away at the Long Blondes' jumpy spontaneity.
Known for remixing Justice and Hot Chip among others, Alkan's style is similar to that of neo-post-punk godhead Paul "Phones" Epworth, i.e., turn it up, keep it steady, and chip away at any and all traces of humanness. When he's not botching the typical Long Blondes sound with distractingly piece-meal mixes and overly mechanical loops on tracks like "The Couples" and "Serious Bit", he leads the group into some intriguing-yet-unfulfilling experiments. As the "Heroes"-esuqe quotes in the album's title suggest, the Long Blondes aspire to be legit art-rockers and, as is the mandate for such bands, they must challenge expectations. Mission accomplished on first single "Century", which not only introduces a spare disco pulse (that thinks it's about five times funkier than it actually is) but also changes things up lyrically, with Jackson penning a scattered and abstract ode to a hundred years gone by. It's all very "Rapture" minus the requisite strut. Odder still is the woozy wipe-out track "Round the Hairpin", a respectable attempt at Can-style kraut that suffers from an indulgent running time and lack of suitable context-- it's as if they Googled "experimental genre" and ran with the results for six long minutes. Of the self-consciously out-there tracks, the minimal "Too Clever By Half" is the clear keeper; on it, Jackson employs a sinister falsetto as she unravels a cunning quadruple-cross tale over skeletal disco. The song revives the winking Long Blondes of old while still progressing their sound instead of blindly tossing everything aside in search of something (anything) new.
On the album's closer, a two-timing Jackson tries to cap the muddy trauma of the rest of "Couples" by embracing her sinful side: "I'm going to hell so I may as well make it worth my while," she belts. It's a refreshing moment of defiance from an album that often seems awkwardly stuck-- between beats and guitars, complacency and loneliness, guilt and redemption. Well-studied pupils of the indie game, it's as if the Long Blondes willed themselves into a classically underwhelming, transitional second LP. (Talking about the record's penchant for left-turns, Cox recently said, "It's a way of setting our stall out. This album's job is to point towards the third album.") They're blessed with a genuine pop star in Jackson, and Cox can still turn pedestrian travails into rousing anthems á la Jarvis Cocker, but neither talent is on full display here. In an attempt to be taken seriously, they've sacrificed too much of their effervescent appeal-- after all, enthusiasm and artfulness need not be mutually exclusive.
