Kate Jackson

Sheffield-based indie rock group the Long Blondes, who featured vocalist Kate Jackson, formed in 2003. They released a handful of well-regarded new wave-influenced singles and two albums, 2006's Someone to Drive You Home and 2008's Couples, before splitting in 2008, due to guitarist Dorian Cox's debilitating illness. After the split, Jackson began working on some solo recordings with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, but soon retreated from music and moved to Rome. There she worked on a different kind of art, architectural painting, though in 2011 a couple songs from the Butler sessions were released under the name Kate Jackson Group and she played a couple of shows in Sheffield. It proved a very brief return to music and she went back to painting. After a long stay in Rome, she returned to England in 2014 to continue painting closer to home. Inspired by seeing the Nick Cave documentary 20,000 Days on Earth, she began thinking about music again. She formed a new band called Wrong Moves and returned to the studio with Butler to finish and embellish the songs they had begun years before. Paired with a new series of paintings she exhibited in 2015 entitled British Road Movies, the album of the same name was cinematic and expansive, the duo crafting a classically British rock album that had echoes of Bowie and Roxy Music, as well as the bands both artists had previously worked with. British Road Movies was released in May of 2016 on Hoo Ha Records.
© Tim Sendra /TiVo