(2022) Miles Kane - Change the Show          


Review:
Early on in his fourth album, 2022’s ebulliently retro Change the Show, Miles Kane admits, “I’m an old school orchestrator, a forgotten cocktail shaker.” While he’s talking about his love life, the admission could just as easily describe his love of vintage ’60s and ’70s pop/rock. Whether on his own or as a member of the louche duo the Last Shadow Puppets with Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, Kane is a kind of mod-rock time lord drawing upon every groovy, vinyl-scratched guitar riff or funky go-go rhythm that catches his ear. It’s a timeless yet often time-specific sound he further perfects throughout Change the Show. The album arrives three years after 2018’s Coup de Grace and again finds Kane concocting a fizzy mix of vintage-inspired anthems. The opening “Tears Are Falling” is a keyboard-driven number that perfectly evokes the glitter-rock balladry of icons like Marc Bolan and David Bowie. We also get the spiraling beach exotica of “Don’t Let It Get You Down” and the midtempo, Beatlesque soul of “See Ya When I See Ya,” replete with its punchy horn hits and fuzz-tone George Harrison guitar accents. There’s also a buoyant, Motown-sounding duet with Corinne Bailey Rae on “Nothing’s Ever Gonna Be Good Enough.” All of these tunes are über-catchy and it’s a testament to Kane’s decade-mashing skills that, while certainly throwback in aesthetic, the songs never feel dated or overly nostalgic. Part of this is due to Kane’s good-humored punk swagger and wry sense of humor, as when he references playing Street Fighter on his Nintendo 64 in “Tears Are Falling” or in the way his paramore played by Rae sings with cheeky delight, “Ah, you picked me up in Karl’s Impreza/I dressed to impress you in my denim and leather Coco Chanel,” on “Nothing’s Ever Gonna Be Good Enough.” Much of the magic in Change the Show, as with most of Kane’s work, is in the way he turns being a kid of the ’90s with an obsession for all things mod into something of his own oeuvre.





Track Listing:
1. Tears Are Falling
2. Don't Let It Get You Down
3. Nothing's Ever Gonna Be Good Enough (feat. Corinne Bailey Rae)
4. See Ya When I See Ya
5. Never Get Tired of Dancing
6. Tell Me What You're Feeling
7. Coming of Age
8. Change the Show
9. Constantly
10. Caroline
11. Adios Ta-ra Ta-ra


Media Report:
Genre: indie-pop, rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits

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