BLOOD RED SHOES Fire Like This (2010 UK 10-track CD album - Produced by Mike Crossey [2008's 'Box Of Secrets'], using the facilities of his new Liverpool studio The Motor Museum, and recorded to analogue tape with the bare minimum of guitar or vocal overdubs, Blood Red Shoes' second album slices away a lot of the gloss in favour of a gutsy, raw and more intense sound. Intensity is the word. 'Fire Like This' is simply exceptional rock music, steeped in a knowledge of your alt-rock staples – Nirvana, Babes In Toyland, Drive Like Jehu – but with its own fingerprint. 'Don't Ask' and 'Count Me Out' harness scything guitars and loud-quiet dynamics like they never went out of fashion. But there's more ambitious fare here, too. Take dramatic seven-minute closer 'Colours Fade', originally released as a free download from their website, or the tender, fraught 'When We Wake', a sombre mediation on mortality that nonetheless burns with hot emotional force. 'In the end is this all we can ask for?' breathes Laura-Mary, as Steven's drums patter with a quiet intensity!)