Miles Kane - 'Colour Of The Trap' (Columbia) Released: 09/05/11

Anyone not watching closely enough over the last five years or so could have been fooled into thinking that Miles Kane had made his way to prominence swinging on the shirttails of others. Jettisoned into the public consciousness as ‘the one that isn’t Alex Turner’ when the Arctic Monkeys frontman, fresh from conquering the universe with his original band, unexpectedly ditched them for a spell to form The Last Shadow Puppets with a relative unknown, we rubbed our chins and looked at Kane askance, wondering what he had in his locker that had tempted Turner away.

Rewind a few years though, and it’s clear Miles Kane has paid his dues.  He began garnering fans and making industry noise back around 2005 with The Little Flames, drawing comparisons with the likes of The Coral, and gaining recognition from Arctic Monkeys, who took them on tour. Though his friendship with Turner would begin around that period, Kane still had time to extinguish The Little Flames following a label dispute and do another respectable round as The Rascals, before The Last Shadow Puppets opportunity came knocking. One high profile side project later, and Kane chose to leave The Rascals behind and toil under his own banner.

Colour Of The Trap provides plenty of evidence as to what attracted the attention of industry, fans, and Alex Turner in the first place. It is the record of a man who has studied hard where good British indie rock has come from, where it is now, and where it’s on its way to.

It opens with ‘Come Closer’, a dark and brooding beat which raises its head only fleetingly into a chorus bursting with melody before darting back down another black alley.

‘Rearrange’, on the other hand, jangles into life, sounding as chirpy an indie pop number as ever you heard, before ‘My Fantasy’ breezes in with a swing beat, strings wafting in and out.

And there in those first three tracks is the key to what makes this solo debut so intriguing. Kane appears to have a rich variety of sounds up his sleeve, all of which he seems perfectly at home with, none of which sound contrived for the sake of difference. Lyrically he may be no W.B. Yeats, sticking to various levels of inter-sex flirting for subject matter, but his nose for a good song, and ear for how to write it, are unmistakeable.

The flirting theme is helped no end by a raunchy duet with French actress Clemence Poesy on ‘Happenstance’, while the collaborations only get more star-studded from there, the record elsewhere featuring a co-write with Gruff Rhys (‘Kingcrawler’), backing vocals from Noel Gallagher (‘My Fantasy’) and a little help from his erstwhile partner Alex Turner on ‘Telepathy’, a track which would have sat comfortably anywhere on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack.

There is Britpop (‘Quicksand’), a Richard Hawley-esque swinging ballad (‘Take The Night From Me’), and ‘Inhaler’, a track which will pin you up against the wall and threaten you for three minutes before walking off with your dinner money.

A solid and compelling debut certainly, but more to the point, evidence that Miles Kane possesses the touch of a songwriting alchemist, able to turn base elements into gold.