Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 21/04/08
Label: Domino

Many creative partnerships are equal, but some are more equal than others. Despite the fact that their debut album is a properly collaborative affair, it's hard not to imagine that Miles Kane is set to benefit from The Last Shadow Puppets rather more than his good mate, Arctic Monkeys' main man, Alex Turner. Prior to the release of their Number One single, "The Age of the Understatement", who in the hell had heard of the unremarkable Rascals, let alone knew the name of their frontman? In terms of legs up exposure ladders, it's not harsh to suggest who's getting the hoist here.

However, their 12 track album - on which Turner and Kane swap both bass and guitar roles and vocal leads, and Monkeys producer James Ford takes up drumming and desk duties - is neither a vanity project nor an act of charity for a chum. It's the sound of a couple of friends leaving their respective comfort zones, trying something different - namely orchestral pop with a retro flourish - on for size and enjoying themselves into the bargain. As it happens, the fit is…well, a reasonable one.

Much has been made of The Puppets' admiration for and reference to Scott Walker, David Axelrod and early Bowie (whose rarity, "In The Heat of the Morning", they cover as one of the lead single's B-sides), but anyone who imagines they've simply knocked out pale imitations of "Scott 4", "Heavy Axe" or Bowie's eponymous LP for Deram Records will be relieved. Thanks to Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett - whose work with Arcade Fire proved he's no slouch in the orchestral arrangements department - this is no pastiche.

Neither does it sacrifice the energy, wit, savvy and songwriting strength for which Turner at least is respected on the altar of strings-saturated pseudo-sophistication. This is as youthful and invigorated a record as you'd rightly expect from two 22-year olds. It's also as much in debt to Turner's pal Richard Hawley - or, more properly, to some of Hawley's heroes - as it is Scott Walker et al. The Puppets have also covered "Wondrous Place" as a B-side to their debut single and Billy Fury's brilliantine-d, bequiffed swagger is much in evidence on the LP.

Elsewhere, there are echoes of Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers and - in Kane's fondness for the tremolo arm - The Shadows. All of which is matched to the principal players' hurtling and urgent, thoroughly enthusiastic, alterno pop in a dozen songs that are, quite frankly, all but indistinguishable from one another. As a result, "The Age Of The Understatement" is an interesting record, but hardly essential - more a curate's egg of contemporary pop culture than something to hold hard to your heart.

    by Sharon O'Connell