| CD REVIEW Miles Kane |
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Band : Miles Kane This young British musician (born 1986 in Meols on the Wirral, near Liverpool) is possibly best known for his role as lead singer and guitarist of the band the Rascals, which he disbanded in 2009. He is also the co-frontman of the duo The Last Shadow Puppets. At the age of 18 he started his first band (as guitarist) The Little Flames (with female singer Eva Petersen, guitarist Mat Gregory, bassist Joe Edwards, and drummer Greg Mighall), a band which got compared to The Coral and managed to find fans with the members of Arctic Monkeys. They also went on tour with those bands, as well as with the Zutons and The Dead 60s, but disbanded following a dispute with their label over their musical direction. Kane, now also on lead vocals, grabbed ahold of The Little Flames' rhythm section and formed The Rascals, continuing musically where they left off with their former band, and signed onto the same label as before, adamant about keeping their own distinct sound (a mixture of “awesome Rockin' beats” with a “psychedelic quirk” and a “compelling and unique spirit”). As a result, Deltasonic Records released the trio's 4-track debut EP Out Of Dreams in December 2007, only 7 months after the band was together. The EP did not get into the charts, but following a 2007 tour with Arctic Monkeys [During the tour Miles developed a strong friendship with that band's frontman Alex Turner, sharing a love of the same musical influences. Playing together backstage, the duo soon started to write new songs and realized they had a future as songwriting partners. Hence, The Last Shadow Puppets was born. The duo traveled to France with producer James Ford and recorded their debut album The Age Of The Understatement (released 26/04/2008) in just 2 weeks. It went straight to #1 in the UK Album Charts, and the duo enlarged with Jack White (would that be the singer/ guitarist of US band The Stripes?) did their debut gig at Glastonbury. The album only just missed winning the Nationwide Music Prize, but did get the Mojo Breakthrough Award, and got nominated for several other awards as well], the band got championed by NME nevertheless, and soon became tipped as one of THE bands of 2008. First full-length Rascalizewas released in June 2008. The band went on to get a small role in the movie Awaydays, playing an Echo And The Bunnymen cover, with Miles having added single-sentence lines. He left the Rascals in August 2009, effectively disbanding the act. Work on this solo album with Miles playing most guitar and singing leads, started almost as soon as he left the Rascals, and the first recordings sessions with Dan Carey (played a major part of the bass and keyboards on the album) and Dan The Automator (previously worked with Gorillaz and Kasabian) happened soon after Miles' signing to Columbia, with Leo Taylor playing most of the drums [except on the songs which have Chris Walmsley or Jay Sharrock (Miles' live drummer) playing that instrument (one is “My Fantasy”,which features Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame as backing vocalist, the 3 others (“Quicksand”, “Kingcrawler”, and “Take the Night From Me”) were recorded at other studios]. Half of the tracks are co-written with Alex Turner, by the way. Gruff Rhys (of Super Furry Animals fame) co-wrote one song (“Quicksand”), co-produced two others (“Kingcrawler” and “Take The Night From Me”), played the bass on one (“Kingcrawler”), and did backing vocals on a total of 5 songs. Other instrumental guests include Ben Parsons (Miles' live keyboardist) and Phillip Anderson (keyboards and bass on “Quicksand”,and Miles' live bassist), Andrew Waterworth (double bass on “Take The Night From Me”), and Isabelle Dunn, Mike Pagulatos, Antonia Pagulatos and Oli langford (respectively enriching “My Fantasy” and “Colour Of The Trap” with cello, viola, and violins). Further backing vocals are provided by Lianne Barnes (first and last two songs on the album), Eugene McGuinness (Miles' live backing singer and rhythm guitarist) and Corrine Bailey Rae (on “Quicksand”), and a co-starring role was set aside for Clémence Poésy on “Counting Down The Days”. The albums first single, “Inhaler” (released Nov. 22, 2010), has the choir vocal participation of The Rev Gospel Collective. In order to be able to compare, I checked out music by both The Rascals and The Last Shadow Puppets, and I dare say Kane's solo music is rather in the vein of what he did with those two other bands, except that the Rascals sound like a lo-fi affair compared to the two other ones. In essence and generally speaking, it means you can expect Pop Rock music (with occasional “harder” tracks, but generally rather “calm”) based in the Psychedelic '60s (nice twang on that...vintage?...guitar)...but generalisations usually mean there's exceptions, which is exactly the case here as well! Because a couple of the songs have less of the Psychedelic and more of a contemporary Indie Rock sound. You can get acquainted with this nice retro music at (www.) mileskane.com (several videos), (www.) myspace.com/mileskanemusic (only the one song “Inhaler”), with some of the same videos also at facebook. The album already out for a couple of months, has seen its sales peaking some while ago, making several chart notations (#7 in Scotland, #11 in the UK, and even #27 and #35 in the Flanders and Wallonian charts of Belgium respectively). 86/100 Tony. |
