Side projects undertaken by the members of established bands have always been funny things that, like it as not, have always been pretty easy o qualify when one looks at the players involved. The Breeders, for example, started out as a side project that afforded Pixies bassist Kim Deal the opportunity to indulge in her love of catchy pop songs and The Beatles. It only grew and got built up when The Pixies fell apart. The same could be said for the players that signed on to do the Backbeat soundtrack; again covering The Beatles, members of the alt-rock hierarchy (that included, but was not limited to, Thurston Moore, Greg Dulli, Dave Grohl and Peter Buck) turned out in droves to put in their two cents.
So if those two side projects can be taken as examples of the norm where side projects are concerned, it`s entirely reasonable to assume what the side project of Alex Turner is going to sound like apart from The Arctic Monkeys. The Last Shadow Puppets defies convention though.
Owing more to the soundtrack work that Ennio Morricone did for Clint Eastwood`s spaghetti westerns, The Age Of The Understatement opens with its title track that seems to almost function as an overture or, in cinematic terms, the key music played beneath the opening credits to a film. Turner and principal collaborator Miles Kane (on leave from The Rascals) present a sweeping, panoramic image of a landscape littered with plateaus and valleys through which an enigmatic man rides. The galloping drums and interplay between Turner`s vocals, the high-lonesome sighing that punctuates his lines and the orchestrations conducted by Final Fantasy`s Owen Pallett give the impression that listeners are in for an epic presentation and from that initial flourish, that`s exactly what they get.
Themes of intrigue, romance, mystery and adventure manifest in the structures of “Calm Like You“, “Separate And Ever Deadly“, “In My Room“, “My Mistakes Were Made For You“, “Black Plant” and “The Meeting Place” and the overwhelming sensation a listener gets is one of exhilaration; as with the great adventure serials like James Bond and Indiana Jones, the tension and dramatic space in the songs both moves them along and is responsible for the thrills here.
The comparatively stripped down and acoustic “The Time Has Come Again” closes the circle and ends the play on a serene note but, as it fades, anyone listening hopes that the sequel won’t be long in coming. Like the best popcorn movies, The Age Of The Understatement doesn’t have any loose ends in the plot and could feasibly be a one-off – it might be the only of its kind – but it also leaves listeners hungry for more. The next offering from The Last Shadow Puppets may simply be variations on a theme but like similar moving pictures, recognition will only lead to the same excitement again.
