In Time to Voices

Being that guitarist/vocalist Laura-Mary Carter and drummer/vocalist Steven Ansell hail from Brighton, England—where in the mid-'60s, rockers would provoke bloody brawls with mods—it’s perhaps fitting that their third studio album under the Blood Red Shoes moniker resonates with a sublimely sinister tension. The opening title track slithers like a serpentine Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as Carter’s vocals segue from a coy and seductive tone to a more threatening howl that soars over walls of guitar feedback. “Lost Kids” follows, with Carter and Ansell harmonizing over dirty six-string scuzz like a young Bilinda Butcher and Kevin Shields. Then “Cold” chisels out a post-shoegaze epic that conjures images of a young and tougher Toni Halliday singing for an early-'90s Curve. Fans of shoegazing will feel right at home in the grandiose choruses of “Stop Kicking.” It starts with Ansell taking the mic like vintage Thurston Moore as a plodding rhythm section sets up a refrain rich in cascading walls of guitar wash and that fluff-on-the-needle vocal style. “7 Years” closes like a distorted Pale Saints outtake.