Music > Live Reviews

Miles Kane

The Nick Rayns LCR, UEA

27/11/18

Former Rascal and part-time Last Shadow Puppet, Miles Kane, made a triumphant return to the University of East Anglia's Nick Rayns LCR last night, almost five years after his solo debut here as part of the 2013 NME Awards Tour. On that night the line-up also featured Django Django, Parma Violets, and Peace, but for my money it was Kane that impressed the most.
 
At the time it was his songwriting partnership with Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner that figured strongly in the setlist – Colour of the Trap had landed some time before, but the Ian Broudie produced Don't Forget Who You Are was complete but still several months away from release. Now, in 2018, we have the new album, Coup de Grace, and with no less than six songs co-written with Jamie T, it sees a third strand being added to Miles' musical miscellany.
 
A damp Monday evening meant that there were no long queues when I arrived twenty minutes before doors opened – sensible punters were obviously not going to stand around in the rain if they could simply arrive and walk straight in half an hour later. Unfortunately, this did mean that the floor of the LCR looked a little sparse as support band Cabbage act took the stage just after eight o'clock. Which was a real shame. This was the third time that I had seen the Mossley boys, and from their opening salvo of Uber Capitalist Death Trade to the closing bars of Necroflat In The Palace they delivered a cracking opening set. Sounding pumped up and with Lee Broadbent and Joe Martin taking it in turns to spike the songs with their satirical attacks – 'I was born in the NHS, I wanna die in the NHS', this was definitely the best I have seen them. Just a shame that the weather conspired to prevent a full house being there to enjoy them to the full.

 
No such worries for tonight's headliner. Even before the house lights dimmed the crowd had started up a chant of 'Miles, Miles - Miles Fucking Kane', and by the time he and his three piece band had kicked off into Loaded the energy levels were simmering like a can of Red Bull in a pressure cooker.
 
Now I have to be honest. Coup de Grace is not my favourite Miles Kane album – I much preferred the sixties swagger and sing-a-long anthems of Don't Forget Who You Are, but when the tracks are blended together with the glam and punk influences of Coup de Grace, and spiced up with classic tracks from Colour of The Trap, the resultant cocktail is intoxicating. No wonder tonight's audience are going crazy. Drinks are getting spilled as mosh pits form, and surge sidewards, forwards and backwards in response to a spontaneous collective release of dopamine.
 
Miles is sporting a white streak of face paint on his cheek, and do I detect a trace of black eyeliner as well? Well, with a giant mirror-ball hanging over the stage, and tracks like Cry On My Guitar and Shavambuca invoking the spirit of Marc Bolan and T-Rex, it almost comes as no surprise when a raw guitar riff emerges, begins to take shape and develops into the introduction to the Donna Summer classic Hot Stuff. We lose any sense of trying to be cool, surrendering instead to the 70's disco rhythm of Giorgio Moroder. And all of this brought to Norwich by a Rascal from Birkenhead.
 
Miles Kane may have flirted with mod culture, indie and garage over the years, without ever really achieving the frontman status that he clearly craves, but tonight's display seems to have elevated him to the status of guitar hero, showman, and rock star, and leaving an exhausted audience revelling in the memory of a Miles Kane manic Monday.