A couple of weeks ago, Miles Kane muscled up to Paul Weller on the cover of a British magazine for a feature on musical heroes: Identically suited and coiffed, the "Mod couple" complimented each other's hair and talked about making music about girls. When asked if he could see himself in the 26-year old Liverpudlian, Weller said yes, particularly when Kane plays live, and blithely commented, "It's just good to see someone giving it one." Having lofty patrons such as Weller is essentially what's brought Kane and his hilariously cheesy, mostly dreadful 1960s pomp pop pastiches this far: He's had nods from the Gallagher brothers, from Kasabian, and spends equal amounts of time wincing at and exploiting his connection with Arctic Monkeys' frontman Alex Turner, with whom he made one brassy album and an EP as the Last Shadow Puppets in 2008.
The nature of these connections may well give you the notion that Kane is one man's meat (and potatoes), and another's poison, with his UK fame proving the result of some diabolical circumstantial accident or of Kane's being some kind of idiot-savant sage. There's something about this four-track EP-- two new original songs, a Tom Jones cover, and an acoustic cover of the titular cut from his 2011 LP, Colour of the Trap-- that seems horribly appropriate for this year of the Queen's jubilee and the London Olympics, invoking what sound like ham-fisted auditions to write the next James Bond theme tune, and bearing a kind of inadvertent, and truly, amazingly ludicrous Carry On-style way with words. (His pretend, tourist-board, 1960s, Union Jack-waggling Britain goes down a treat in Japan.) Kane fancies himself as a right old lover-man, Mick Jagger, a Beatle in a saucy clinch, or even one of the aforementioned Gallaghers on a charm offensive. It goes without saying that he is precisely none of these things; rather, Kane shares a kinship with fellow groovy, smoochy Brit Austin Powers.
And much like the international man of mystery, it's hard to know whether to bother being offended at the pathetic way in which Kane sings about women, or whether to just laugh at the silly little man. Horny bombast dallies around wannabe Beatles-y pastoral strumming on the admittedly compelling, Skream-produced opener "First of My Kind", where he and some unfathomable acquaintance are "crawling through like midnight panthers, growling at the moon." His kind of girl is "sub-zero... as cold as ice," and her kiss gives him "frostbite." Sadly for Kane, he doesn't have the kind of voice-- a Gainsbourgian croon, Dan Bejar-like wryness, even a deep character brogue like Mac DeMarco-- to carry off clichéd nonsense like this; his voice is painfully nasal and grating, with all the control of a rickety go-kart revving around a hairpin.
Amazingly, "First of My Kind" probably represents the strongest songwriting on this EP. "Night Runner" is subtler musically, with the verses rolling along on subterraneous bass and fizzy Moog, but the lyrics resemble a song you'd learn in German classes to help you remember the relationship between prepositions and transient/intransient verbs. It's sexy stuff: “I come in/ I come out/ Of a trance/ Take it in/ Took it out/ Took a chance," and so on and so on via "Sing aloud/ Sing it sad/ Sing along" until Kane ends the song thrutching, "Night runner! Night runner!" as if there's some element of espionage and covert thrill to a song that definitely won't make you want to get out the night exciters.
The pièce de résistance, however, is "Looking Out My Window", which is frankly astonishing. You perhaps wouldn't have imagined professional perma-tanned ladies' man Tom Jones to be on Kane's list of idols, but here's a song from his 1968 LP Help Yourself, acting as the centerpiece to the EP, its impossibly cliched and convoluted lyrics starkly showing up the flimsy, meaningless structure of "Night Runner".
On one hand, its inclusion points to Kane's bold sense of humor; on the other, the condescending cry of, "Looking out my window, woman, trying to find you," feels distasteful and misguided. And about halfway through the song, a cascade down the piano keys puts paid to the indignant stomp of the song thus far for Miles to make an excruciating stab at the spoken/scat breakdown, like a working men's club James Brown impersonator: "I'd like to tell you about a little girl who left me so alone and blue/ Trouble is if I paint a picture too well, you might fall in love with her too/ Oh, she's 'bout 5'6", a little bag of tricks/ My mother told me to watch my back but I wouldn't listen…"
Weirdly, it doesn't feel a million miles away from the breakdown on Captain Beefheart's "Too Much Time" from 1972's Clear Spot, where Don Van Vliet opens up "some old stale beans" and a "can of sardines" and dreams "of somebody to cook for me." Let's be clear: there is no comparison to be made between Beefheart and Miles Kane, but if Kane wants to persist with this horn-accompanied, wannabe lascivious streak, then it might be worth discarding Weller (and Tom Jones) as a hero in favor of Van Vliet in order to learn how to do the thing properly-- and to learn how to get people to laugh with you, rather than at you.
