“LE CHAT NOIR are a boy, Teddy Hesper, and a girl, Eileen Spruce, playing stripped-down, sleazoid rock’n’roll. They’re both 23. He’s from Devon, she’s from LA. He plays guitar and sings. She plays drums. She moved to Devon to make things move faster. It worked. The resulting album ‘Tales From Silver City’ is a masterclass in gutter-groove, mixing ‘50s garage with ‘60s Detroit howl and ‘70s punk riffola, where songs like ‘Mary Lee’ ooze class, confidence and clarity. If the Stooges, MC5, Winnebago Deal and Blues Explosion rock your world, then come stroke this dirty pussy.”
- 24/7 Magazine album review
“Located at the sonic crossroads between raw blues-rock abuse and garage fuzz Le Chat Noir deliver the goods across fifteen pulpy noir-flecked tales of hard liquor, stray corpses and grief. This is effortlessly-convincing nu-blooze - cheap, sleazy and brutal - like The Black Keys sound-tracking a Film Noir. Underneath the tough blues exterior lies an equally doomy alt.rock heart that would doubtlessly beat comfortably on a 90s Sub Pop compilation.”
- MAPS Magazine album review by Tom Leins
In late 2005, long-time friends Teddy Hesper and Eileen Spruce began a Transatlantic musical correspondence. At his residence in Devon, England, Hesper began to write songs and send them on tape to Spruce at her home in Los Angeles. She then added drums to these recordings and returned them. After overwhelmingly positive reaction to these early demos from a growing number of fans all over the world on the Internet, in September 2006 Spruce finally moved to the UK and Le Chat Noir was born.
Le Chat Noir have become notorious for their energetic, physical live performances, leaving stages looking more like battlefields soaked in sweat, blood and broken drumsticks - Spruce appears possessed as her frenetic drum beats act as a foundation for Hesper’s wall-of-sound guitars and exorcism-in-progress delivery, ‘howling like a wolf over crack whip guitar riffs’ (Moles Club live review by Annie Gardiner). Meanwhile, the band’s songs take the listener on a journey through the troubled streets of Silver City and Deadwood, fictional towns that incorporate elements from a diverse range of sources such as film noir, Paris and the Wild West with a modern twist - the perfect setting for the band’s dark tales of violence, desperation, alcoholism and life at the bottom.
Le Chat Noir are currently gigging extensively in the UK and have just finished recording their second album, Deadwood, due for release shortly. September sees the band heading to Europe to perform shows in Germany, Italy and France, to be followed in November by a second trip to the continent to play in the Benelux region.
Chloe Beswick - Vocals and Guitar
Craig Campbell - Bass and Vocals
Rachel Cawood - Guitar and Vocals
James Beswick - Synth and Keys
Daron Greenhough - Drums/Percussion
Official Website: http://www.lechatnoir.org.uk/
MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/chatnoirband