Dirtblonde

Siouxsie Sioux struts my pedestal, incomparable icon, addictive drug, fed with under counter black 12" at Soho's Sister Ray, when prescribed medication ceased to maintain the high, until even that source ran dry, leaving me wanting. Substitutes failed to subsume craving, not worthy to lick one tainted stiletto while crawling subservient on dog chain, that is, until now. Dirtblonde, Liverpool duo, helter-skelter dark grunge, slashed with cut glass Debbie Harry vocal, deceptively simple, yet highly melodic musical phrases captivate, paint lyrical sleaze, Banshee fused with Blondie, electrified by Ladytron, alchemy of aptly named Hell and Blue conjures thunder and lightning, ragged wild rose but certainly not token, each track on this EP leaves me wanting more. 'Token Rose' ,'Broken Glass' and 'In Furs', lessons in how less can be more, glowing melodic droplets, tantalising fireflies spike darkness , alluring clarity, entrancing. 'Lonesome Girl' crashes into Patti Smith and Velvet Underground territory, anguish twists through slashing brambles while 'Machine' wallows in depths of tortured mind, I am enslaved, hooked, my EP of the month. - Mudkiss fanzine

Dirtblonde are a Liverpool two-piece who have a new EP out, Token Rose. Im a massive fan of the title track that also opens up the release. There are inklings of PJ Harvey admiration, but with a darker, razor bent that befits bands like Australians Magic Dirt, or even the slinkier numbers that the Kills often whip out in their sleep. The EP doesn't always light my fire - the acoustic 'Broken Glass' feels underdone when considering the raucous numbers fit them like a studded leather glove - but they are a band to take note of. - Sonic Masala

Liverpool duo consisting of Ivan and Lula Blue Hell, practice a hot, insolent and vicious rock. After a debut EP of 2007 followed by a single year, they return with "Rose Token", 5 tracks EP that could convert those who have not yet tasted the sharp and loud style of these two demons. - My Car Is Full Of Plums blog

There is more to Liverpool music than psychedelic sea shanties and magical mystery tours on yellow submarines. Dirtblonde's (first featured on the Devil's blog way back in 2006, The Magical Mystery Tour - Stop One Liverpool) sound harks back to the last truly great scouse musical era. The era of Jayne Casey and Pink Military Stand Alone, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes and Wah Heat. They're alternative and proud and are back with a new EP, the dirty, blond Token Rose E.P.


Broken Glass wouldn't sound out of place on Street to Street Vol 1 the influential compilation of the alternative Liverpool sound of the 80s while Lonesome Girl sounds like The Raveonettes if they'd been born within spitting distance of the Liver Buildings.


Get some excitement back in your life with Dirtblonde. - Devil Has The Best Tuna

Dirtblonde are a UK rock duo that hammer their sound right up to the speakers and chug away like the 90's grunge and 80's overkill guitar we all love. Their new EP “Token Rose” is a great introduction to the band.

Opener “Token Rose” showcases them at their best with a real blasting with power chords blasting through the speakers and ethereal wavering vocals. It reminds me slightly of a more coherent Cocteau Twins that’s more focused on power than melody. “Broken Glass” goes more for the melody with an acoustic/vocal number that sounds like it’s been recorded purposefully away from the microphones as it has an airy mystical quality to it. “In Furs” however is dirty and seedy with its almost organ like guitar picking over the main three chord riff. What Dirtblonde show in all the five songs is their effortless ability to weave just a couple of chords into something that is much more than the sum of its parts. The vocals are so sad and lethargic and juxtaposed against the harsh guitars and stomping drums, it’s nailed a certain whimsical given-up feeling. “Lonesome Girl” is an overdriven guitar fest with a tambourine attached for good measure. Dank and dirty from beginning to end, I felt like I needed a bath afterwards. The EP closes with “Machine” which is the most produced track with a nifty bass riff and eerie guitar feedback bleeding from ear to ear as the vocal echo on repeat. It creates a great atmosphere.

This is a great EP from a new band that I’m now very much excited over. Dirtblonde show diversity and a knack of making a space of their own. HPM would like a full album please!
- http://higherplainmusic.com

"...a band that ought to be the next big thing." - http://thedumbingofamerica.net

“This is what we dream of demos sounding like – scuzzy, raw, and seemingly built upon total and utter boredom with everything. Dirtblonde are a two-sword rock’n'roll traincrash and we like them a lot.” - The Stool Pigeon music paper

“Their description: ‘This is Rock’n'Roll’. Our view: they could be right. [the songs] ooze with character. This kind of demo fills a void that label-released music can’t... it’s the kinda raw shit that we all need to hear” - The Stool Pigeon music paper

“A refreshing pile of rock’n’roll scuzz fresh from the music scene. This duo have created an image of drugged-up grimy punk rock like no other at this time.” - Tasty fanzine

“Not many bands in Liverpool could be described as having true punk energy. Dirtblonde are one. Not falling into any traps of the poseur or pastiche, Ivan and Lula are the real deal: scuzz-loving, gritty noiseniks, with a live show that will floor you. Raw power, if you like…” - Liverpool.com

‘Well that was something you won’t see twice in a lifetime.’ I said to my housemate as we went to the bar after Dirtblonde had finished their set at Sound Control last night. I said it just loud enough so that two men would hear me, men who arrived at the gig, panting slightly as though they had been hurrying, just as the band was just getting off stage.

Dirtblonde is the bastard child of the Velvet Underground and the Stooges. Ivan tortures his guitar exquisitely while Lula sings, in haunting fashion, a poetic stream of consciousness that troubles my soul deeply with ungrasped longing.

Dirtblonde is a two-piece, and the overall effect is that Ivan and Lula have somehow been deserted by the rest of the band, and finding themselves thus alone they bring out the real music – music which in ordinary times is the soundtrack of what ‘might have been’, playing beyond consciousness in the wretched and long-forgotten past life of your mind. Rarely does their recorded material do them justice, and they truly have to be seen live to be understood in all their complexity.

However, on the way home, driving through Manchester’s grey and rainy hopeless streets, we played their EP over and over, sinking deeply into Ivan’s incredible guitar while Lula murmurs softly of Badlands and ‘sex and death at 3am’. - Last Bass Player Blog

The only, and therefore the last, bass player ever to grace the menacingly bored, weary of life and screamingly noisy wall of sound that is Dirtblonde, Lula is the representation of all that is magnificent and louche in the world of music and bands and bass playing.

Dirtblonde once ran a night at Liverpool’s Korova in Fleet Street called F*ck, the asterisk added not so much out of modesty and finer feeling but because they really couldn’t give one for the trouble such a small letter causes. Dirtblonde don’t make trouble, trouble just happens naturally around them. Many times I’ve watched Lula casually push a glass off the top of a speaker cab so that it shatters on the very floor where Ivan is about to roll around in an orgy of self-destruction before he smashes his guitar in an impossible rage at the inadequacies of life. It’s not so much performance art as a retreat into a midnight blue world of despair and uncared-for domination.

Lula’s bass playing is a calm blue oasis as Ivan’s hell breaks loose around her. - The Last Bass Player Blog

A Liverpool duo with the biggest collection of pedals this side of Denmark Street. Their drone-heavy skuzz-rock is raw punk noise, clearly inspired by Sonic Youth and the JAMC but also imagine the Kills with razorblades for vocal chords.

Ivan and Lula (perfect rock’n’roll names!) end the set playing the pedals over dense feedback and rolling on the stage, which just seems to fit their style so well. - soundsxp.com/

"This is the sound of rock n roll. Fired up. Raring to go. A Girl. A Boy. And a drum machine called Dee Dee. This is rock n roll. This is how music should be made… essential trashy punk rock. Beautiful" - Lost Music

“This really is corking…the songs exude a gawky yet insouciant menace…in all, a top-notch effort, to which the only fitting response is, quite simply, ‘ace’” - TASTY fanzine

Dirtyfilthynastyrocknrollfuckers - The Austin Chronicle (SXSW 2009)

Dirtblonde’s raw, gritty noise punk is reminiscent of an era when punk wasn’t yet mainstream and there was no pop about it.

Though they may not be household names yet, I say give it time. These Liverpool natives are bringing the raucous energy back to punk and will no doubt put on an awesome show at SXSW this year. - Austin Sound Check

Is there anything wrong with simplicity? For anyone who considers Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band‘s complicated time signatures, endless multi-tracking and finger-wrecking chord changes as the pinnacle of human musical achievement, the answer would probably be ‘yes’.

The others who thing that The Stooges‘ Raw Power is dumb fun done right would probably disagree, but they’d be too busy pogoing to even think about such complications. Today’s New Band are Dirtblonde, and they know the truth in unassailable Rock ‘N’ Roll Fact #1: a loud guitar is better than a quiet one.

The Hangman whistles and howls into your personal space, roughs you up and saunters off. “Yeah, I’m so wasted, and I’m sorry I ruined your life,” they offer by way of explanation, in the song of a similar name.

Listening to Call It Art, it occurred to me that I could barely remember the last time I heard a song where a chunky guitar and vocals were the only sounds to trouble the listener. No synth washes, drum machines or bleeps to fill the space, no lush engineering tricks, nothing other than tape hiss and a song. In a time when even the newest, greenest bands equate good ‘production values’ with success, this is welcome respite indeed.

They’ve just played the South By South West Festival (sorry, ‘SXSW‘, for you super-cool types), if that matters to you. It shouldn’t, really. They have no Myspace page. I like that. Their songs can be downloaded – for free! – at their website here. I like that too. Listen to Dirtblonde and revel in simplicity itself. - A New Band A Day

It’s dark, uncompromising stuff, sonically raw and brutal the EP sounds like the insides of Siouxsie Sioux’s head after a particularly bad nightmare, or the Raveonettes if they were dipped in acid. - Artrocker

Dirtblonde are playing early when I arrive. The duo from Liverpool, Ivan Hell on guitar and Lula Blue on vocals/bass play over a muggy programmed drumbeat that has me peering into the dry ice to spot a non-existent drummer. Dark lyrics such as “time of my life, under the knife” float over escalating out of control wall of noise guitar, like No Age with The Ettes vocalist.

They finish the impressive set in front of a disappointingly sparse audience by grinding their instruments on the barrier and hurling plastic pint pots towards the crowd, who are huddled around the sound desk out of range. - Silent radio

Having draped the unused drum kit with red LED lights and their mic stands with bright, twinkling scores of bulbs they burst into a sublime racket of gorgeously low register, apathetic vocals and roaring, throaty, louder than apocalypse guitar. Backed only by their trusty drum machine (never underestimate the power of a Boss Dr-670), they’re downright dirt-o-matic, scuzz lusty perfection.

‘This one’s about being an obsessive fan of someone’ Lula announces before they break into Superfan - a riot act of want that sees Ivan dropping to his knees for it’s finale, screeching his fingers across fret boards causing an ungodly, visceral disturbance. He’s bowed upon the floor for the act, as though in begging before a shrine.

There’s a cheeky nod to Patti Smith too, with His Name - a Gloria-esque spoken word, locomotive dreamscape of tersely built up raw pleading rhythm which is sumptuous for Lula’s honeyed delivery and Ivan’s chug-chugging accompaniment.

‘Here’s a slow one for those of you who don’t like too much noise...’ Ivan grumbles into the mic, probably at the scores of lifeless people by the bar shouting over his pneumatic guitar sound, no doubt wishing they were sat in the quiet of The Everyman Bistro eating quiche and discussing the misanthropic merits of silent discos.

They kick into Brooklyn, a plummeting, lost-soul of a song that pines and longs and hammers on with an underscore of melancholy juxtaposed by a determined, swinging fist of a riff that never quite makes the punch, but is opulent in it’s doomsy ongoing threat.

Their finale is as blissfully destructive as they’re notorious for. A Rock’n’fuck-it kick of the bucket that descends from sexy, heavenly moans to a riff-babel infestation of discordant destruction. Lula hangs her head like an unused puppet and bashes bass with an amorous determination for decorum whilst Ivan swings his guitar about the place like Leatherface with his chainsaw, before attacking the LED lights draped around the drum kit. He pulls them off and around him, becoming entangled like Mowgli fighting a neon snake before falling to the floor and writhing about in a onslaught of pure, precious din.

The set is over. - Purple Revolver

The term ‘cool’ has been expressively and adoringly chiseled into the marrow of Dirtblondes’ body of rock’n’bone over the many years of their loud, gnarly, scuzz shattering career.

It’s fixated on every review, winking feverishly at hipsters everywhere with the stamp of approval that Dirtblonde are an official rock’n’roll dream. The real deal. Jagger. Iggy. Leather. Snarling. - Purple Revolver

"...this boy and girl duo makes an uncompromising noise and plays chaotic gigs which often end with broken guitars, bruises, and blood. There has never been anything like them in Liverpool, which may be the reason they’ve divided opinions more than any other local band in recent years?some love them, some hate them, but few remain indifferent to Dirtblonde.

They favor pawnshop gear, fuzz pedals, second-hand Epiphone guitars and valve amps, but despite some comparisons with the White Stripes, they sound more like a mixture of Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, and Jesus & Mary Chain, with a touch of blues ... " - Gibson.com

A delicious slab of nasty rock scuzz... it’s the sound of motorcycle crashes, of bruised eyes, of existential rage and a yearning for glamour in a grey world - Kitten Painting Fanzine

“A delicious slab of nasty rock scuzz… it’s the sound of motorcycle crashes, of bruised eyes, of existential rage and a yearning for glamour in a grey world” - Kitten Painting Fanzine

"Liverpool's DIRTBLONDE are the most enigmatic of the bands on this stage. They're a punk duo with a spitting and snarling Ivan Hell on guitar and a gentle bass playing vocalist in Lula Blue...DIRTBLONDE achieve the wonderful result of driving a lot of bored people away while a small but fierce cluster of disaffected and wonderful looking kids are drawn like bruised moths to a rather guttering candle of venomous wax. Hell savages the security rails with his guitar in the finale and the new fans are in raptures. For the kids who love it this is the real thing, and probably the only dose they’re going to get all weekend." - Whispering and Hollerin website

Interview: Dirtblonde prove that what doesn't kill 'em makes 'em stronger. - SevenStreets.com

Compared to Bonnie & Clyde as often as to musical influences such as Jesus & Mary Chain, Dirtblonde are true outsiders, who play loud, raw and unpredictable gigs. They could well be the most rock and roll thing you’ll see at SXSW this year, and they are quite possibly the best band from Liverpool in recent years. They’re also DJing at the coveted Alternative Press VIP Party. With an appearance at Canada’s North By Northeast already confirmed, it seems North America is bound to hear more from them in the future. - Gibson.com (Official Website of Gibson guitars)

Continuing the grand tradition of sleaze-punk merchants like The Voidoids and The Jesus And Mary Chain, Dirtblonde have spent the last year building up something of a buzz about themselves…we could well be hearing a lot more from Dirtblonde very soon - The Fly magazine (UK)

Dirtblonde are like a punk rock orchid. Shockingly beautiful, tragically delicate, and so immediate that if you blink, you'll miss them - Channel 4’s Ideas Factory

Far more abrasive intent than any NYC wannabe... you don’t have a Jack and Meg, you have more of Sid & Nancy meets natural born killers Mickey and Mallory. Lovely - ManchesterMusic Website

Then there's the two-piece Dirt Blonde, who may draw comparisons to White Stripes. But the male and female duo has guitars and bass respectively, rather than guitars and drums. With some synthetic drum beats in the background they look and sound like a cross between Sid n Nancy and Bonnie n Clyde fed through a fuzz box. The guitarist looks like he's been on a crash course of rock n roll behaviour with The Cribs. They have some subtle spiky tunes at the start of the set, but the fuzz becomes too much. The guitarist ends up trashing the set, and smashing his guitar into a glass bottle at the entrance of the venue. They seem to leave the audience speechless. - BBC

Dirtblonde make a delicious racket. Fuzzy, scuzzy, bluesy, bruisy, loud and proud in equal measure.

They were seperated at birth from the Kills and the Raveonettes are possibly their older sister.

Theirs is the sound of breaking glass, of petrol, of late night walks in the city, of anger, of noise. It's a glorious cocktail of glam, punk (New York not London), blues and the Velvet Underground.

In an ideal world Dirtblonde would be on the cover of Heat and Paris Hilton would be washing dishes in hotels. Why not make your world perfect by dyeing your hair dirtblonde and having some fun. - The Devil Has The Best Tuna (UK Blog)

Dirtblonde on the Topman Unsigned Stage [ Leeds Festival 2006] are far more divisive, attracting looks of adoration or disgust from passers-by with their scuzzy rock'n'roll. Arrogant (one fan offering them a CD is knocked back with the words "I don't want it if I'm not on it"), bolshy, rough around more than just the edges, it's the second most rock'n'roll thing to hit Leeds today. - Rock Midgets website

“Dirtblonde operate in a twilight world where the canonical bands are not the Beatles or Beach Boys and their heirs but the Cramps, 60s garage punk, The Stooges, Pussy Galore, The Kills, mid 70s New York punk. An imagined place where music can offend and inspire not simply end up as incidental music in a mall or on football highlights. And for this, and their winning ways with the primitive, primeval riff and hook, I salute them. Turn up the treble and pass the amphetamine please!” - Is This Music?