Furious Pop
I admit to not knowing who Miles Kane was before The Last Shadow Puppets; luckily hearing The Rascals I have realised that it is quite clearly he who brought the best qualities to the collaboration; forget that lanky Sheffield songwriter, here's a band that make really cool music. It's instantly obvious from the first guitar burbles and frenetic beats of 'Freakbeat Phantom' that The Rascals do something that's both interesting and relatively unlike the rest of the indie kids out there. The chugging, effects-ridden guitars and bruising riffs are matched with a tense pace and psychedelic nuance that grips the listener to the core. There's a slight skittering edge to the percussion and the vocals tell a dark and doomy tale that suits the musical mood perfectly.
'Shades of Entertainment' is a fractious onslaught of guitars and hurried vocal harmonies. The tune simpers out into a few moments of angstful guitar echo, before bursting in again; it's dynamics like this that make The Rascals far more exciting than your usual indie band with little awareness of how to keeps listeners turned on. 'A Hand in the Shadow' features scratchy guitarwork that creeps menacingly up from behind Kane's fuzzed-up vocals; it's a brief, rapturous rush of giddy fun that quickly launches into the next tune, 'Secret Affair'. This last tune is a raucous collision of yet more funked-up effects and racing rhythms; it's such attention to detail and real creativity that gives The Rascals some real promise. Please forget The Wombats, this year Liverpool is Capital of Culture and The Rascals are its best proponent of pop music by far.