Miles Kane - Coup de Grace

The Guardian 60

Virgin EMI

Miles Kane has now been a household name in British indie for close to a decade, which tells you something about his tenacity and something else about British indie. After his Little Flames and Rascals outfits burned out, the Birkenhead songwriter subsisted as an Alex Turner accessory, propping up the Arctic Monkeys man’s Last Shadow Puppets project and releasing solo records just often enough to distinguish himself, to the layperson, from other domestic long-hairs such as Jake Bugg.

Fresh from a breakup, Kane assembled a team of collaborators for his third LP, which includes seven co-writes with Jamie T and another, Loaded, with Lana Del Rey. John Congleton produces, ensuring Kane’s broken heart and tepid charisma don’t spoil these functional glam, psych and pop-oriented radio romps. On songs such as Loaded, a California pop strut, this complex machinery runs smoothly, despite lyrics evoking teen verse scribbled under an Ian Brown poster: “Racing like a psycho, walking on a tightrope, funky like a monkey with my makeup running.” It’s perhaps unpromising to think of Kane, hardly recognised for his emotional range, swooning his way through a breakup, but his one-size-fits-all showmanship holds it together, from Killing the Joke’s daydream synth balladry to Cry on My Guitar’s pouty glam-up. There’s also plenty that flounders: on Coup de Grace, a funky get-over-her anthem, he boisterously howls the title over a sweet, featherlight guitar jangle, suggesting that autofill vulnerability isn’t the sharpest creative tool when it comes to heartbreak.

Pitchfork 36

The louche UK singer returns with an album that thrusts ahead quickly and painlessly but leaves you itching to shower off its overpowering cologne the second it’s over.

The Guardian 20

(Virgin EMI)

The Last Shadow Puppets’ Miles Kane still isn’t the superstar frontman he turned down a spot in Arctic Monkeys to become, but this latest moonshot shows he hasn’t given up. Where the Monkeys’ latest edges close to the Puppets’ excellent lounge lizardry, Coup de Grace is punchy and immediate.

“Punky but croonery,” is how Kane describes it. But while great art can emerge from the tension crackling between two polarities, more likely you’ll get something like this: 10 derivative essays in punk, glam and punk-funk, with a karaoke-Bowie honking over the top.