Laura-Mary Carter, left, and Steven Ansell

Blood Red Shoes are punchy, explosive and dynamic.

So it comes as some surprise to the unwary to learn that this glorious racket is created by just two people.

And a young, shy and waif-like couple, they are too - with a fragile looking girl on guitar and a pale and skinny boy on drums.

Laura-Mary Carter and Steven Ansell take their name from a story about iconic screen siren Ginger Rogers, who once rehearsed so hard during a dance routine that she cut her feet to shreds, soaking her shoes with blood.

When her choreographer returned after a short break, he presumed she'd changed her white dancing shoes to red ones.

"If you put on a blindfold you wouldn't think there were just two of us," admits Laura-Mary.

Anyone who caught any of the duo's show at the Zodiac, Oxford Brookes or Truck Festival will know what she means.

The pair met while Steven was playing with punk band Cat On Form.

After one show, the two got talking and joked around.

"He stole my hat from me and told me to come to Brighton to get it back." says Laura- Mary. "But I lived in London at the time and didn't want to go. A year later I agreed to go and we met up and had a jam in a studio there. I was really shy - the most shy person ever - which is hard to believe. I had to rehearse with the lights off."

But there was chemistry and, on that brief trip to the South Coast, they wrote their first song.

"We knew there was something there that doesn't happen between two people very often," she says. "We listened to the sound we were making. It sounded mighty."

Two weeks later they played their first gig - agreeing on their name only after a frenzied night of emailing.

They seem to share a telepathic bond, communicating mid-song through tiny gestures.

"We do have a link," she agrees. "We seem to know what the other is thinking."

But, contrary to rumour, she insist the pair are not 'an item'.

"It's understandable why people would think that," she smiles. "We are on tour so much together and are really close. But Steve is like family."

While the boy/girl two-piece is still relatively unusual, they shy away from comparisons with other duos - acts like The Subways, The Kills, and especially not White Stripes.

"For us, it just happened by accident," says Laura-Mary. "We didn't set out to be a two-piece. We just didn't have time to get anyone else."

Blood Red Shoes play The Oxford Carling Academy on Thursday. Tickets are £7 in advance, including free entry to Smash Disco for over 18s.

Their long-awaited debut album Box Of Secrets is released next month.

3:00pm Thursday 27th March 2008

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