Side projects are often horribly self-indulgent; an artist merely relying on his large existing support, in order to do what he wants without the explicit need for people to actually like it. When Thom Yorke released his ‘well-received’ debut album, The Eraser, it appeared Yorke was getting all his personal electronic nonsense out of the way, before returning to Radiohead and hopefully producing an album based around Jonny Greenwood’s guitar. Brilliant. The fact that In Rainbows was pretty disappointing admittedly makes this example slightly redundant, but the point still stands – usually, side projects are best ignored.
So, in contrast, the Last Shadow Puppets are actually rather good. Part of the enjoyment comes from the fact that it’s largely dissimilar to anything else around. For those unenlightened, TLSP features co-frontmen, Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, and Miles Kane of The Rascals, and formerly underrated Scouse indie band The Little Flames. Rather than being another indie 2.0 album, however, the two roped in some influential names from elsewhere. James Ford, responsible for Simian Mobile Disco and the Klaxons’ producer, is on drums, whilst the most unusual aspect of the band is the 22-piece orchestra, which was arranged by Owen Pallett, the brain behind the strings arrangement on both of Arcade Fire’s albums.
This is, however, still a largely ‘indie’ audience, so it was difficult what to expect from this performance. The orchestra emerged in a rather low-key manner, in dribs and drabs before the performance started, talking amongst themselves.
Later, the main protagonists arrived, laughing and joking even on their entrance. The setlist was as you would expect from a band with only one album to date, aside from a cover of ‘She’s So Heavy’ by The Beatles. It’s always a good sign when a band knows how good their own songs are – demonstrated by TLSP leaving album highlight The Meeting Place until the end of the set, though the biggest cheer was for lead single The Age of the Understatement, a potential Bond theme superior to Jack White and Alicia Keys’ efforts.
The sound quality was Hammersmith’s usual slightly underwhelming self, though the lightning accentuated the orchestra wonderfully. The only major complaint was the excessive use of a smoke machine. It’s hard to imagine anyone coming away from a gig saying ‘Yeah, Led Zep were great, the guest appearances from Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain were pretty surprising, and the fact we were sitting ON the stage was amazing – but for the love of God, where the hell was the smoke machine?’
It’s somewhat of a cliché, but the appeal of Turner is that despite three no.1 albums in three years (and the fact that he’s dating possibly the most attractive girl in the country) is that he still seems like a normal boy from Yorkshire, slightly surprised that strangers have turned up to watch him. One song is dedicated to his mate Barry, ‘who hasn’t been feeling very well today’, another to his nan who was at one of his gigs for the first time. In fairness, this is probably more her kind of thing than I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.
When this tour is over, Turner will fly out to California with his (other) bandmates, to record the Arctic Monkeys’ third album, to be produced by Queens of the Stone Age frontman, Desert Sessions coordinator and all-round legend Josh Homme. It’s a hard life.
I returned home with my feet aching thanks to my battered converses, with some chips from a burger van, and slumped in front of the sofa to watch Oasis at the Electric Proms, performing ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’ with a full orchestra and choir. In a sense, not largely removed from what TLSP were doing, but there lies the contrast between Alex Turner and Noel Gallagher. Turner has the ability to write an album specifically for an arrangement such as this, record it, tour it, and then get back to ‘real’ business. Gallagher is happy to play corny, criminally-transformed versions of songs that seemed old a decade ago. And that is why Gallagher is yesterday’s news, and Turner is the man of the moment.
