Renouncing the standard rock’n’roll lineage of the time (“We do not listen to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors or Bob Dylan,” went their online mission statement), the quintet instead filled their hyper-visual, all-encompassing world with references to ’50s movie stars and pop icons, vintage glamour and cult outsiders. But it wasn’t just in the audibly brilliant opening statements of their early material that the band set themselves apart from the masses. Initially unsigned, early singles ‘Separated By Motorways’ and ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ snuck into the party with the kind of shimmying, sassy strut that was part Blondie two-fingers-to-the-man, part disco giddiness and part Franz Ferdinand angular eyebrow-arching soon, they were picked up by Rough Trade. Full of faded glamour and a playful strain of doe-eyed daydreaming, the Steel City has its own unique place in indie mythology, and its into this lineage that The Long Blondes landed back in the mid-noughties, in a tumble of charity shop twin-sets and effortless, cheekily-winking cool. From Pulp’s tales of suburban ennui and unfortunate bedroom trysts to Alex Turner’s early stories of youthful bravado and a certain romance, there’s always been something in Sheffield’s waters that’s lent itself to a particular kind of storytelling.
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