Pages

Monday 23 June 2014

Song Review - The Red Shoes




The Red Shoes
by Ella Hooper
Album: In Tongues (due 2014, soon please Ella!)




The simple title of Ella Hooper's latest single brings me to a particular sentence that my fellow blogger Matt said to me one night about who wears red shoes (while I was probably wearing my own fabulous pair of red shoes) and while some may have taken offence to it, I might know Matt well enough to know to just wait for the explanation, which was about how another friend of his had a saying about the same thing and it always stuck in his mind, which is funny, because every time I put on a pair or contemplate purchasing another pair of my own awesome red shoes I laugh when I think of Matt saying what he said...and thus is the cycle of life. Or something.


This brings me to the Ella Hooper gig that Matt, myself and two of our fellow bloggers Katie and Nayt were lucky enough to see at the Black Bear in May. It was at that gig I smiled while taking a sneaky look at the set list and saw the words 'Red Shoes' scrawled across a piece of paper taped onto the stage just before Ella and her incredible band played that night. With those two words I giggled to myself and wondered what a song about red shoes would possibly sound like.


This brings me to the sounds of a wall of killer guitars, a beat born to be danced to and Ella's smashing rock voice. It has been a long time and a few different paths in many different shoes since her first appearance in Australian music but with 'The Red Shoes' Ella shows she has the ability to rock maybe now more than ever before because quite simply, she chooses to, with a voice as powerful as she demands it be, completely in control of every note and a song reminiscent of some of the best pop-rock anthems you can think of. It's a simple lyric, but then so is the subject matter of obsession and that line I keep repeating is only making me want to do exactly as it says and dance 'til I can't dance no more.


Which brings me straight back to that particular sentence that Matt said all those years ago now about the type of people who wear red shoes, because while I don't remember exactly, it was probably before or after a night of beverages and dancing until our feet bled that he said it. Exactly what he said isn't for everyone, but while it still makes me smile, it doesn't really matter who wears red shoes, because now we're going to have to add the fabulous and one of Matt's lifelong faves; Ella Hooper, to the list of awesome red shoe wearers anyway.

Jo Michelmore gives 'The Red Shoes' three and a half Michael Hutchence heads out of five...


And...Ella will be playing two shows to officially launch 'The Red Shoes';


Thursday, 17th July at the Newtown Social Club, Sydney and
Friday, 18th July at the Sheeban Band Room, Melbourne.


You should go. If we lived in either of those places we would.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Love it or hate it? Agree or disagree? Let me know what you think!