Without any extra fanfare, Blood Red Shoes, the Brighton two-piece specialising in aggressive, minimalist garage rock, take to their instruments and blast out “Don’t Ask”, the opening track of new album “Fire Like This”. There is no extended intro, no build-up beyond drum sticks raised in the air in anticipation.

The performance is super-tight: Laura-Mary Carter thrashing out scuzzy power chords and a seemingly unending stream of catchy riffs on a lone guitar as Steve Ansell accompanies with powerful, energetic drumming.

While Steve Ansell chats to the audience between songs, Laura-Mary looks downright unhappy to be here, spending the entire gig in a perpetual scowl. At one point, she actually stops halfway through a song because her guitar is out of tune (not the audience could tell; besides, when playing an amp with enough distortion to fell a tree one flat note is fairly irrelevant).

Despite Steve Ansell’s attempts to crack some jokes, the audience become bored watching Laura-Mary laboriously tuning up her “Kurt Cobain guitar”, and when someone shouts at her to hurry up, she tells them to fuck off.

The mood doesn’t really improve from there. Laura-Mary takes a rare moment to address the audience and announces she’ll go kill herself after the gig.

It’s a shame, because despite the unfortunate atmosphere, the music is absolutely astounding. Every song they play – the setlist focusing heavily on the new album – sounds perfect, a supercharged version of their recorded equivalents. “Heartsink” (introduced as “a song for dancing to”) gets the kids at the front leaping into the air; elsewhere, the audience shouts back angsty choruses like “can’t escape anything in this town!” and “don’t ask the reasons why!”

The only disappointment of the night is “Colours Fade”, a proggy departure in style for the band. Though one of their best songs on record, it lacks the depth of sound it needs when played live with a single guitar.

Whether or not they concede to adding in some extra musicians to their stripped-down show in the future, judging by tonight’s show it’s likely that Blood Red Shoes will continue to play invigorating, energetic music as long as there is an audience out there that wants it. That is, as long as Laura-Mary’s guitar stays in tune.

Image Courtesy of MDMAZING