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Le Chat Noir are hard-rockin' Transatlantic desperadoes Teddy Hesper and Eileen Spruce. Since Spruce moved to England in late 2006, the band have gigged heavily all over Europe, their joyous, full throttle live performances leaving stages soaked in sweat and blood and littered with broken drumsticks. Le Chat Noir have performed alongside acts such as The Sonics, Shiny Toy Guns, MC5, The Dwarves, Wanda Jackson, The Bellrays, Peter Pan Speedrock and The Kids.

Along the way, Le Chat Noir sold out their debut release Tales From Silver City and released a follow up - Deadwood - on Bath-based indie label Patchogue. Tales From Silver City was voted Playmusic Magazine’s Best Unsigned Recording of 2006. A third studio album, Postcards From The Dark Highway, is due for release on 15th May 2009.

Teddy Hesper was born in London, England, but moved to the Devonshire countryside at an early age. His guitar style is unusual and certainly influenced by his years as a bassist before Le Chat Noir - he often plays in open D, using an 2-way box to split the signal to a bass amplifier and guitar amplifier to flesh out the band's sound - whilst his untrained, exorcism-in-progress vocal delivery has led to comparisons to Kurt Cobain, Frank Black and even Jim Morrison. Hesper undergoes a remarkable change upon taking to the stage - he often seems to be wrestling with inner demons, charging Le Chat Noir's live shows with excitement and unpredictability.

Los Angeles native Spruce moved to England in 2006 to be in Le Chat Noir. Anyone who has witnessed one of Le Chat Noir's live shows will testify that her aggressive style blows any comparisons to other well-known girl drummers out of the water. When on stage, Spruce becomes a woman possessed; she is an irresistible presence behind the drums, thrashing out solid, powerful rhythms as though her life depended on it. People have made comparisons to John Bonham and Keith Moon. She is one of the most animated and hardest-hitting drummers you are ever likely to see, attested to by a trail of broken double butt-ended drumsticks and smashed cymbals!

Carpe Diem @ 4AD, Diksmuide (Belgium) 07-03-08.

There's something about seeing Le Chat Noir live, you just get that feeling deep down that you're watching a band that really have something special, and you might just be there at the birth of true greatness. The stories you hear about small venue early gigs of seminal bands, like The Brian Jonestown Massacre starting fights at the viper rooms or Sex Pistols at Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall, The Beatles at The Cavern etc. - where hardly anyone was there but all of them went on to form bands after being inspired by what they saw... you can’t learn the kind of connection this double act have on stage, and the natural aptitude for their instruments. You just know that, and it’s only a matter of time before they do, when this band start playing for big, big crowds they could start a fucking riot... as soon as you put aside those White Stripes misconceptions – and you will as soon as they strike the first note, the first scream and first thunder of kick and snare, you realise your about to witness something explosive - and I for one feel privileged to now be able to say "I was there at the beginning".
Noize Makes Enemies live review

Teddy is the man on raw vocal and dirty blues electric, done up like a no-messin shit-slingin' cowboy. Eileen is on drums and sometimes off them... she pounds harder and faster than any female drummer I've ever seen. Think The Kills, The Ravonettes and every other male/female two-piece and double the 'f@$% me' ratio... drumsticks flew, Teddys blood was spilt, guitars were thrown and even trousers were split in the best example of dirty garage blues rock'n'roll I've seen in a long time!
Moles Club Website live review

RELEASE DATE: May 2009
Garage Sale Records GSR-005

Postcards From The Dark Highway is an epic tale of love, war, death and rock'n'roll. Le Chat Noir’s third studio album, released in May 2009, is a thematic prequel to the band's previous two albums, returning to the fictional setting of Silver City and the surrounding Wild West-inspired landscape. Over the course of its 14 tracks the album relates the story of Jack Valentine and Roxy Lecoeur - a pair of desperados who fall foul of the law, fall in love, form a band and ultimately meet their untimely ends out on the Dark Highway.

Fans of the previous albums will find out why Mary Lee became a femme fatale as well as meeting a rich host of new characters including the corrupt vigilante priest Father Blackheart, the relentless lawmen of the Silver City Regulators and the saviour of rock'n'roll himself: the legendary Johnny Moorview!

LINER NOTES

A lot has happened since we recorded our second album, Deadwood, back in 2007. Over the past year we’ve played all over Europe, learning so much and meeting so many wonderful people along the way... too many to list, you know who you are!

The process of recording and writing Postcards From The Dark Highway was a long and at times frustrating journey. We were determined to capture our live energy so that people who haven’t been able to see us yet could get a flavour of what we’re really about. After several aborted attempts we decided to strip things right down and record the music ‘live’ with our gigging equipment; no overdubs or embellishments, just the in-your-face sound you’d expect to hear at one of our shows.

In a studio situation you’re faced with the option of layering more guitar parts, adding bass and so on. We’ve resisted the temptation to do this and have tried to stay as true to our live sound and spirit as possible. Panned left and right you will hear my guitar and bass amps recorded simultaneously, with drums and a single vocal take down the middle.

We are proud of this album and we hope you’ll find its direct, raw sound to be refreshing in a world increasingly dominated by fake, overproduced records that bands struggle to reproduce in a live setting. Rock music shouldn’t be sanitised. We believe that rock’n’roll comes from the soul. It should be played live and loud, warts and all.

Wherever you are in the world, we promise we’ll try to play a show you can get to sometime soon!

Until then, keep rockin’!

Teddy & Eileen
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Exclusive artwork by Teddy Hesper and 8 page booklet. The album was recorded in the spring of 2009 at The Cat's Cradle.

RELEASE DATE: July 2008
Garage Sale Records GSR-004

Return To Silver City is an internet-only release containing six rerecordings of songs that featured previously on the first two Le Chat Noir albums.

RELEASE DATE: September 2007
Pathogue Records PATCH009

Deadwood, released through Bath-based label Patchogue Records, was the hotly-anticipated second album from Le Chat Noir. It saw the band developing the visceral garage rock of their debut album and taking it to a new level, with tracks exhibiting a new maturity and confidence whilst still staying true to the stripped-down aesthetic which has earned them a cult following. Exclusive artwork by Tim Zastera and 8 page concertina fold booklet. The album was recorded between January and July 2007 at The Cat's Cradle, Devon.

RELEASE DATE: November 2006
Garage Sale Records GSR-001

Tales From Silver City, Le Chat Noir's debut album, was available in a long since sold-out limited run of 500 on Garage Sale Records, individually signed and numbered with exclusive artwork by New Zealand-based artist Daniel Alexander. The album was recorded between September and October 2006 at The Cat's Cradle, the band's studio deep in the Devonshire countryside.

Exeter’s, boy-girl, garage-punk, rock-roll duo render most of this month’s other dodos extinct. ‘Deadwood’ picks up where last year’s gloriously scuzzy debut left off, tweaks up the grizzly Detroit-esque distortion, introduces a host of new mythological icons and throws us around like rag-dolls in a dust-storm. Combining elements of the Wild West fed through the alcohol-stale streets of the Wild South West, the likes of ‘Wedding Dress’ are riffmungously fervid, while the dark prairie coo of ‘Down By The River’ reveals a band with enough strings to their bow to slay critical all-comers.
24/7 Magazine review of Deadwood

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 review of Tales From Silver City

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 review of Tales From Silver City