Somehow this makes Ozaki Minami a Manics fan doesn't it

[petronia]

The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of the Understatement: I was on second-coffee-date terms (so to speak) with this album before I left for Brazil, where I stopped listening to it because it didn't suit the climate. Then I came back to Montreal, and we picked up where we left off. ♥ Id est review would've made more sense two months ago but what can you do... Sororial unit accused me of liking this for Owen Pallett's frou-frou orchestral arrangements. XD This is untrue - I got used to the indie vocalising pretty fast - though Pallett is a sort of under-credited band member here, as always. Dude doesn't so much subordinate himself to genre constraints as he loves them, which makes his "griffe" all the more distinctive. A la Morricone.

The Last Shadow Puppets - My Mistakes Were Made For You
The Last Shadow Puppets - Meeting Place

Other charming things about this album:

1. It is only about 30 minutes long.
2. The two vocalists sound exactly the same, except they have completely different quaint British regional accents.
3. Native good sense occasionally shines through in the lyrics. At other times they sing about, like, metaphorical garden shear attacks OF LOST LOVE.
4. The CD cover image comes from a 60s girlie pinup photobook... that my dad owns.
5. Other than Jacques Brel, I'm non-conversant with the artists they're pastiching, although when Owen Pallett described it as "Lee Hazlewood mosquito guitars" I can at least conjure up a sense of that soundscape (think: early James Bond soundtracks). I've not knowingly heard any Scott Walker. Interestingly the interviewer in one Youtube clip brought up Beirut, as Zach Condon has purportedly been big upping Scott Walker all year(!). No synergistic illumination was shed however as TLSP had obviously never heard of Beirut in their lives.
6. Ridiculous music videos. ♥

For the record, TLSP is a side project of Alex Turner, the singer/songwriter/guitarist of indie rock band Arctic "How Can You Tell We Started This Band As A Joke In The Ninth Grade" Monkeys, and Miles Kane, the singer/songwriter/guitarist of other indie rock band The Rascals.** The rationale is that they are BFFs who enjoy collecting old records, getting matching Beatles haircuts, covering Rihanna, and giggling like lolis. As such, the main extra-musical entertainment value lies with the British press's battle to rein in its moé for long enough to complete an interview with dignity. The problem is that the Libertines debacle basically did for the NME what the Slam Dunk doujinshi fandom did for Weekly Jump, i.e. "If only we knew this back when we were pushing the Smiths!" Only gonna be more lulz from here on out, guys.


** I have stopped keeping track of people in UK indie bands forming side projects with people in other UK indie bands. This is where Canada's socialist-collectivist nature shows to its best advantage: we give our indie musicians automatic membership in an umbrella organization called Broken Social Scene of which all other bands are defined as side projects, bypassing the semantic quibbling.

Comments

[elfiepike.livejournal.com]

oh man, thank you for the tracks! ♥ i watched that "age of the understatement" video a while back and thought it was just ♥ but never got around to looking them up for real.