By the time the Arctic Monkeys’ fifth studio album, AM, was released in September 2013, Alex Turner had established himself as one of the most compelling frontmen in rock and roll — though perhaps not for the usual reasons. Suddenly, he was channeling a bit of Jim Morrisson’s brooding croon, pulling off Jaggeresque sashays, and doing more with his hips than anyone but Beyonce. But, no matter how much WD-40 he seemed to have sprayed on his hip labrum, the whole pomaded AM aesthetic seemed a bit too polished and rehearsed to be really rock and roll.
Cue Miles Kane. The pair collaborated as The Last Shadow Puppets on 2008’s The Age of the Understatement, and though they’d created a sound basically unlike anything else in the twenty-first century pop/rock universe, their relationship as musicians and as pals took a few more years to reach maturity. These guys are best mates — evidenced, for example, by that video of them flailing at a Strokes concert — and maybe you can only be as loose and goofy and, well, yeah, rock and roll, as these two are Tuesday night at Terminal 5 in midtown Manhattan if you’re playing with your best mate. It helps if your tunes slay and if you have a decade-old audience of worshipping fans, which these two do. You could say that New York’s invisible stars were aligned for an amazing show tonight.
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