Film Review

08 January 2009 22:03 BST

Last Shadow Puppets: The Age of the Understatement

Domino Recording Company, out now.

In a nutshell...

Modern take on melodramatic baroque pop.

What's it all about?

Unlike many of today's popular music album's, The Age Of The Understatement actually comes with a cogent, if some what cloudy, concept behind it, with The Last Shadow Puppets using its 12 slices of lushly-orchestrated, extravagant pop to focus on the theme that male-penned rock 'n' roll has been obsessed with since its conception – the beauty, the buzz and the heartbreak induced by chasing, capturing and being cast off by the fairer sex.

The Age Of The Understatement is based around an indefinable 'her', with its sweeping strings, foreboding brass and dashing drums providing the backdrop to a story about how 'she' was "subtle in her method of seduction" on the title track but that "you'd be a fool to make your pans with her" on Black Plant because 'she' is "innocence and arrogance entwined" (My Mistakes Were Made For You).

Who's it by?>

The Last Shadow Puppets came to be when singer, guitarist and creative hub of Arctic Monkeys, Alex Turner, took time out from his day job and eloped to France last summer for a recording session with Miles Kane, frontman of Liverpudlian post-Monkeys three piece the Rascals, who played on 505 from the Monkeys last album, Favourite Worst Nightmare.

Turner and Kane first had the idea of making beautiful music together after they met when Kane's former band, The Little Flames, toured with Turner's band in 2005. Inspired by Scott Walker's Jackie, the duo were joined by producer du jour James Ford, also of Simian Mobile Disco, who produced and drummed on The Age Of The Understatement, while the orchestration on the album was arranged by Final Fantasy main man Owen Pallet, also a sometime member of Arcade Fire.

As an example...

"When we walked the streets together/All the faces seemed to smile back/Now the pavements have nothing to offer/And all the faces seem to need a slap." – Separate And Ever Deadly

Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys

Given that Favourite Worst Nightmare charted at number seven in the US Billboard charts and Turner's apparent Midas touch when it comes to music, there's an outside chance, although Turner and Kane's day jobs may get in the way of any press-the-flesh promotion of their album.

What the others say

"If you hear only the caustic vocals and lavish arrangements of faster-paced tracks like Only the Truth, the Last Shadow Puppets are exactly what you'd expect Arctics-with-strings to sound like." – Marc Hogan, Pitchfork Media

"This way The Monkeys keep their credibility and get to look new drinking buddies QOTSA in the eye, while Turner gets to show off his more expansive side free from any nagging commercial pressures." – Paul Moody, Uncut

So is it any good?

Given that most band members side projects and supergroups are generally the result of the megalomaniacal delusions of an ego inflated to the size of a galaxy, it comes as something of a relief that The Age Of The Understatement is not a five-CD exploration of neotraditional Goan darkcore folk trance.

While the Last Shadow Puppets chamber pop influences are obvious – Scott Walker, Burt Bacharach, Serge Gainsbourg, Ennio Morricone – Turner and Kane tread the line between building on their inspirations rather than merely replicating them carefully.

Separate And Ever Deadly in particular provides the right balance between the Puppets' theatrical starting point and Arctic Monkeys' gritty, concise energy, with the melodramatic organ that it is built around balanced out by a hurtling beat and frantic guitars.

The title track and I Don't Like You Anymore repeat the trick with Pallet's sweeping string arrangements, while The Meeting Place and Time Has Come Again use 505 and Only Ones Who Know from Favourite Worst Nightmare as a template.

Only on In My Room and The Chamber do Turner and Kane stumble towards appropriation of their inspirations, both coming a bit too close to the arched-eyebrow of early Divine Comedy.

The Age Of The Understatement is a striking, subtle, sharp and mesmerising album, but let's hope that both Turner and Kane realise they are sailing so close to caricature that the Last Shadow Puppets should be left high and dry unless they perform an about turn on their next voyage.

6/10

Kelvin Goodson

Test your film knowledge and win...