The Long Blondes

The Beggars Group US is pleased to announce that it will be releasing Someone To Drive You Home, the debut album from The Long Blondes under exclusive license from Rough Trade. The album was released in the UK last November and has been racking up accolades and praise far and wide. The release date is set for June 5, 2007.

The Long Blondes want to be as good as Abba. Seriously, it’s not irony. As good at writing hit songs as Abba were. Yeah, they like Joy Division and all that, but not half as much as they like Dusty, disco and Del Shannon. Everybody’s talking 'bout Pop Music. Everybody’s talking 'bout the Long Blondes.

A quick recap, then.

The aim was to form a fantasy pop group: Nico, Nancy Sinatra, Diana Dors, Barbara Windsor. Sexy and literate, flippant and heartbreaking all at once. With this in mind, the Long Blondes went falling and laughing headlong into the glamorous world of heaving amps onto trains and touring and touring and touring.

The first kindred spirit to notice the Long Blondes was hip south London independent label Angular Records. Through them, the band released a brace of exhilarating 45s; The Hitchcock-inspired Appropriation (By Any Other Name) and bona fide cult classic Giddy Stratospheres. In the UK both have become indie dancefloor staples ever since, as has most recent release Separated By Motorways, recorded by uber-producer Paul Epworth (Futureheads, Bloc Party) at his request and released on his own Good and Evil label.

The band were leading double lives worthy of Harry Palmer for most of 2005, taking odd days off work to play in New York, Stockholm and Barcelona and signing autographs while their bosses weren’t looking. Meanwhile, word was spreading and all three previous singles were capturing the hearts of pop music lovers all over the world. They kicked off 2006 as recipients of the NME Philip Hall Radar Award (previously won by Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs) and played to increasingly frenzied crowds as everyone from the Guardian to Vogue proclaimed the Long Blondes to be the Best Unsigned Band In The Country. In April of ‘06 – almost three years to the day of their incarnation – the Long Blondes signed to the legendary Rough Trade records. The label that brought the world the Smiths, the Strokes and the Libertines had done it again! The band recorded Someone To Drive You with Steve Mackey (Pulp, MIA) and it was released in the UK in November of last year.

So that’s them; Sardonic style icon and protagonist-in-chief Kate Jackson, guitarist Dorian Cox, bassist Reenie Hollis, keyboardist Emma Chaplin and drummer Screech. The next chapter of Sheffield's idiosyncratic musical heritage: The suburban disco fantasies of the Human League, the opulent ridiculousness of ABC, the seedy glamour of Pulp a As The World Turns cast's worth of characters all with loves, hates and passions just like yours. It’s a Blonde, Blonde, Blonde, Blonde world just lie back and enjoy it.