Once more unto the bleach

Sheffield art-pop outfit The Long Blondes recently returned to the fold with their second album Couples. An accomplished collection of uptempo danceable grooves and leftfield sonic experimentation, it was produced by renowned DJ Erol Alkan. Alkan’s influence is certainly discernible on my favourite track, ‘Too Clever By Half’, a rather brilliant piece of low-key electro-funk.

“That’s my favourite song too,” coos The Long Blondes’ lead singer, Kate Jackson. “It actually started off very differently. We wrote it in Sheffield and it was a guitar-based track. We took it down to the studio and played it to Erol, and he said, ‘I’m not really feeling this, it belongs on the first album. I think you should push yourselves a little bit and move forward from that sound.’
“So we took all the guitars out and slowed the drum pattern to the disco beat. I can’t remember how many beats-per-minute it is, but it is a specific disco beat that’s supposed to be the same rhythm as people having sex. I used to sing that song an octave lower, but then I decided to sing it in a breathy, Donna Summer sort of style, and everything just clicked. It was Erol’s idea to change that song as drastically as we did.”
According to Kate, Alkan is a man who likes to keep a busy schedule.
“He gets no sleep at all,” she laughs. “He works so hard, he’s the most tired man alive. When he was doing our album, he was producing us during the day, and then he’d go home at about one or two in the morning, and stay up until five mixing the Mystery Jets. Then he’d come back into the studio at 10. You should see the bags under his eyes! Erol’s a genius, I think he’ll be good at whatever he turns his hand to.
“He’s talking about how he’s had enough of producing. He’s done three albums in a year, which is plenty, and now he wants to go and direct videos.”
Originally from Suffolk, Kate was lured to The Long Blondes’ birthplace Sheffield during the ’90s by Pulp.
“The lyrics really made me think that this would be a good place to move,” she explains. “I remember going on the coach to Manchester, when I was 15 or 16, and we got into a big fight. I tried to take a Star Trek poster off the wall in a store, and this big guy came up and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I threw it back at him and said, ‘I’m sorry! I’m from the South!’ (Laughs) But I remember getting on the coach the next day to go home, and the drive from Manchester to Bury St Edmunds, where I lived, takes eight hours.
“It went through Sheffield, and going into the city from Manchester, you pass six big gasworks. And because of the lay of the land – it’s built on seven hills – the view is amazing. I thought, ‘Wow, this is great, I’d love to live here.’ It’s so different from my hometown, it’s so industrial, and I find that really aesthetically pleasing, as opposed to little quaint towns in the countryside.”
One rather odd motif on Couples is the Two Ronnies. Indeed, one half of the celebrated double act, Ronnie Corbett, is featured in a collage on the inner sleeve, which Kate designed
“I love the Two Ronnies,” she gushes. “We’ve grown up with them, it’s part of our heritage, in a way. There’s a sample on the record from No Sex Please, We’re British, which of course Ronnie Corbett starred in. And he was brilliant in Extras as well.”

Couples is out now on Rough Trade