The Last Shadow Puppets "The Age Of The Understatement" (Domino)
After deliberately ignoring the Arctic Monkeys for a solid year -- I'm such a grump -- I finally got sucked-in by Matt Helders' surehanded drumming. He's awesome. From there, it was easy to realize that frontman Alex Turner may have the stuff of superstars. (But I'm still willing to consider contrary viewpoints.) For now, though, I'll take The Last Shadow Puppets -- Turner's side project with Miles Kane of the Rascals (who?) -- at face value. The sexed-up cover art for The Age Of The Understatement is very Serge Gainsbourg, and the album was recorded in France, but the music leans far more toward precocious elegance than toward horny Gallic self-awareness. The boys also hired themselves a London orchestra to provide much of the sonic heft. That, my friends, is what British hype will buy you.
Fair enough, though, y'know? This slice of Turner, appropriately, is less suspicious and less agitated than the Monkeys version; he's also more apt to be broadly cinematic in his descriptions. "And she was walking on the tables in the glass house/Endearingly bedraggled in the wind/Subtle in her method of seduction/The twenty little tragedies begin," he sings on "The Age Of The Understatement." Compare that with any straight-outta-Sheffield tune by the Monkeys, and the overt lyricism is noteworthy, if not overpowering. The ol' snarl surfaces at times, though: "When we walked the streets together/All the faces seemed to smile back/And now the pavements/Have nothing to offer/And all the faces seem to need a slap," Turner talks/sings on "Separate And Ever Deadly," which recalls the Clash's old-West mode. The jaunty single-to-come "Standing Next To Me," a Tuner/Kane duet, has a similar moviehouse quality. (Bonus reference: It's been noted already, not by me, that the Puppets
seem to spring from the same aware-of-all-London-eras place as The Good, The
Bad and The Queen.)
The quiter/moodier efforts are my favorites, though, even if Turner's wordplay isn't always as strong on those tracks. On "The Chamber," he proves to be a proficient mid-'60s-style crooner; on "Black Plant," he traipses across the territory of a few well-dressed gentlemen (Bowie? Ferry? Bono, even?); and on "Meeting Place" he's almost courtly as the horns and strings wend their way around him. I'm not as impressed by the tracks with touches of psych-rock and proto-metal ("I Don't Like You Anymore," "Only The Truth"). They're too heavy on execution -- or at least too obvious about it -- and that's not what I want out of my Monkeys and, uh, Rascals. Can't knock Turner and Kane for trying anything on The Age Of The Understatement, though. Their precociousness is the kind that matters.
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