Blood Res Shoes have been getting quite a lot of press lately as "ones to watch". The youthful and photogenic duo hale from Brighton, and are inevitably compared to the White Stripes given that they play quite raw, somewhat incoherent self-penned songs while clanking about with drums and a guitar and that there are two of them, one boy and one girl, Steven Ansell and Laura-Mary Carter.
For You Bring Me Down Laura-Mary does the vocal duty over some not terribly distinguished jerky post-punk guitar. She sounds like a nice street urchin, not quite as aggressive as you might like, and her voice has a whiney timbre which becomes increasingly annoying with repeated plays.
You Bring Me Down just doesn't grab you; it's frenetic without having a real sense of energy, like it's been added to and complicated too much. It comes over as punk lite, as though the performers are acting out a role and aren't really committed to it, which may well be a fault of the production as they have a promising-sounding live reputation. But it certainly doesn't put them on my "ones to watch" list.