Someone To Drive You Home

Starting a band in a city with a particularly large looming spectre of musical history must be a mite intimidating. The Long Blondes dealt with it by sprinting full-tilt at their influences. Not only did they quote Cabaret Voltaire's 'Nag Nag Nag' and reinterpret Jarvis's charming lech through the lens of weary siren Kate Jackson as frontwoman, but there was plenty else besides in their orbit.

Foregoing the era's fashion for Gang of Four-inspired guitar lines, they looked instead to 60s countercultural figures Edie Sedgwick and Anna Karina, garage rock, and Carry Onfilms, all 'quoted' in their music. Their debut album's sleeve is adorned with a painting, by Jackson, of Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.

It took a while for Someone To Drive You Home to be set down on wax, following a sell-out series of singles on small indie labels, but itwas worth waiting for. Despite male guitarist Dorian Cox writing all the songs, The Long Blondes felt like a proper girl gang in a mid-noughties indie landscape that was disconcertingly male – something which, sadly, hasn't really changed.

Jackson's Debbie Harry-alike vocal style is utterly in tune with the kitchen sink melodramas concerning flirtations, jiltings and lust, which rocket along at a fair clip with guitarist Reenie Hollis, bassist Emma Chaplin and drummer Screech Louder providing a soundtrack and back-up yelling. So much more than the sum of their parts, and sorely missed.