It’s not often that things make their way straight from the breathless email of a marketing monkey to my inbox to the blog without a lot more time spent letting things sink in. In this case however I’ve been curious for news about this project for some time but always assumed it would be one of those major label projects that would bring the Web Sherriff down on my head like a sack of spanners.

You can imagine, therefore, my surprise and delight when an email not only plugging this band, but also containing two promotional mp3s officially sanctioned the the Enforcers of teh Internetz, landed in the Toadly inbox.

The Last Shadow Puppets are a side project of Miles Kane from The Rascals (who?) and Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys, and inspired by a mutual love of Scott Walker and early Bowie. The album itself is recorded with a full 22-piece orchestra, so quite how representative these acoustic versions will be is anyone’s guess, but it’ll be out on Monday (except in the States – ha ha!) so you can judge for yourselves.

I tend to waver on the Arctic Monkeys. They have some great songs, but the last album didn’t really excite me all that much and, if I’m honest, the first one took me quite a while to get into as well. Alex Turner is undeniably a really gifted lyricist though, and from the interviews I have read seems like an intelligent, inquisitive fellow so I have high hopes for The Age of the Understatement. Turner seems to have been developing an interest in 50s rock ‘n’ roll recently: something of an affinity for the same influences that inform Richard Hawley. Basically, this is a good thing, and if this project gives him the chance to throw off the shackles of the often mealy pub-rock of the Monkeys then this can only be good news.

The Last Shadow Puppets – My Mistakes Were Made For You
The Last Shadow Puppets – The Age of Understatement

My latest excursion into the murky waters of The Waiting Room saw me praising big famous bands for a change, really rather ironic given the hassle talking about those same bands has caused around here recently.  Would I have done the same segment in hindsight?  Would I fucking bollocks!

The Waiting Room, Wednesday 16th April 2008

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It’s weird, I feel something of a tit now for bigging up the bands that then bring down teh haterz, even though I know it’s nothing to do with the actual bands themselves.  Or at least I should bloody well hope it’s nothing to do with the bands.  Odd how the behaviour of someone employed by someone who employs someone to look after a group can make a band look quite so bad, really.  Guilt by association.  I know the band could quite easily order off the attack dogs (would a really big label even pretend to listen?) or publically condemn this sort of bollocks, but why would they?  They make music, not politics.  Although REM are pretty politically involved so you would expect them to have a stance on all this web madness one way or another.

Hmm, well that’s another ramble for another day.

It’s a pig themed week for some reason, so I thought I’d lob these little gems into the mix just for fun.  The Sparklehorse song in particular is something of an enormously noisy, fuzzy masterpiece.

The Beatles – Piggies
Sparklehorse – Pig