Last Shadow Puppets - Castlefield Bowl, Manchester, 10/7/2016

  by Harry Sherriff

published: 30 / 9 / 2016

intro

Harry Sherriff watches the Last Shadow Puppets, the side project of Miles Kane and the Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner, play a n often surprising show at the Castlefield Bowl in Manchester to promote their just released second album, 'Everything You’ve Come to Expect'

The Last Shadow Puppets like to keep us guessing and I would be amazed if anyone at the Castlefield Bowl predicted they would open with a cover of the Smiths’ 'Last Night I Dreamt Somebody Loved Me', featuring Johnny Marr himself! The week their sophomore album 'Everything You’ve Come to Expect' came out I saw the Puppets for the first time at Liverpool’s beautiful Olympia venue. That night I left in awe of Alex Turner’s vocals on 'Sweet Dreams, TN', my favourite track off the new album. It was one of the best live vocal performances I’ve ever seen. The Olympia venue can make a band tame so I was excited to see what they could do at an outdoors gig in the centre of Manchester, to 8,000 people and I wasn’t disappointed. In 2008 they did seem more of a duo. The 2016 Puppets incarnation doesn't seem as solidified… There’s pretty much no sharing microphones on the new tunes and they seem to have their own marked territory. Miles Kane has the more shouty get them going Bad Habits vocals whereas Turner has the more melodic crooner tunes. The people of Manchester loved it. They asked for an encore and they got it in the form of The Fall’s 'Wired', once again featuring Johnny Marr. The night ended on 'The Meeting Place' and just like I felt after the Olympia gig, I left Castlefield Bowl wanting to see the likeable duo in a different carnation in a more disparate setting. I did long for the patter in-between songs that was present in their Liverpool Philharmonic gig back in 2008 but Turner and Kane are clearly aiming towards a different live atmosphere. It was a shame that 'Aviation' and the title track off the new album was bizarrely missing from the set but it was a memorable night no less. Turner especially has been talking about a trilogy of albums in the press lately but when will Album 3 be arriving? You’d like to think after a new Arctic Monkeys opus. When the Last Shadow Puppets 3 does roll around I hope it’s an ever bigger surprise. Photo by Marie Hazelwood Http://mariehazelwood.tumblr.com

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