The Long Blondes – “Singles”

It's funny how things change. You'd have expected that "Singles" would be a relatively small milestone in the release history of Sheffield band The Long Blondes, but recent events seem to have made it much more significant. As we explained recently, due to guitarist/lyricist Dorian Cox's ill-health, The Long Blondes have decided to call it a day. It's never nice to see a band's career come to an end, but the circumstances suffered by the band here seem particularly sad. Again, we express our best wishes to Dorian, his family, and the band."Singles" (Inverted commas being used in the same way as they were in the title of the band's most recent album "Couples") represents the tracks that The Long Blondes released on a series of 7'' vinyls on various record labels towards the start of their career. In keeping with that, it's not some sprawling, all-over-the-shop collection, but a taut twelve track compilation which goes down very nicely indeed. Admittedly "New Idols" sounds a bit fuzzy and awkward for its own good here, and "Giddy Stratospheres" seems to go on and on, but generally this is an good selection of songs. One of the things that marks out Cox's songwriting is his knack for writing from a female perspective (those lyrics then sung by lead singer Kate Jackson - who incidentally painted the compilation's cover). One of the highlights here is the frantic "Separated by Motorways" which sounds cleaner than some of the other tracks on offer.Elsewhere there is "Autonomy Boy" and "Peterborough", both of which were previously unreleased, and helps make "Singles" a worthwhile purchase for established fans of the band. "Peterborough" in fact sounds like a good conclusion to the compilation, with its mentions of the band's base Sheffield. Nevertheless I have a strange nagging feeling about this compilation. Its timing is unfortunate, and it does feel a bit sparse as a retrospective of the band's career. Fans of jagged, spiky rock though, can never go too far wrong with songs like these - even if this is a slightly odd ending to Long Blondes story. 69%The Long Blondes on MySpace