Comparison of The Rascals’ debut effort with that The Last Shadow Puppets was inevitable and fitting; for the uninitiated, the band is the unexpectedly awesome chart-topping act formed by head Monkey Alex Turner and The Rascals’ Miles Kane. Listening to Rascalize is a process in which Kane’s main musical project are found severely wanting, considering the promise of his other collaborations. The album is a cross between the high-octane indie rock of the Arctic Monkeys and raw, Merseyside sounds of The Coral, on whose label The Rascals have found a home. Indeed, debut single Out of Dreams has the psychedelic background effects, vocal harmonies, discordant tonality and offbeat guitars of early The Coral or The Cooper Temple Clause. Bond Girl, meanwhile, is an attempt and a miss at Alex Turner-esque everyman lyrics, as Kane sings of ‘sweating out another tantrum, reads the book of poetry’, or elsewhere exclaims that ‘it’s a whorehouse in here’. Miles Kane even sounds alarmingly like an amalgam of Turner and James Skelly. Unfortunately, his vocals often grate on the listener because slightly sharp, especially on the album’s opener, and the majority of the album has a murky, messy sound to it. At moments (such as in I’d Be Lying To You), Kane and his bandmates Joe Edwards and Greg Mighall stray far enough from their influences to enable the audience to listen with fresh ears and single Freakbeat Phantom is a fairly catchy and solid piece of psych pop. Otherwise, though, Rascalize is largely derivative and unenjoyable, thrown into sharp contrast with similar but better executed efforts. www.myspace.com/rascalmusic
Latest content from The Rascals
More content from 'Deltasonic'
