Miles Kane

Throughout his career Miles Kane has always found it difficult to shake off associations with Alex Turner. The Scouse-songwriter and Arctic Monkeys frontman are often intertwined with both their releases, career decisions and even location after moving five minutes from each other in LA a few years ago.

However, while Turner’s band have made a point to turn left-field in their sonic explorations in recent years, leaving many a fan dismayed at the musical direction in the process, Kane has instead made a return to his indie rock routes for recent LP ‘One Man Band’. The singer-guitarist having made a conscious effort to not include any piano or brass in this album, turning back to his faithful six-string friend to compose many of the songs, whist also flying in indie rock royalty from the likes of Blossoms, Razorlight, Circa Waves and The Coral to help him write it.

This was evident in Camden on Friday night, as the rowdy weekend capital crowd witnessed a back catalogue from the Birkenhead native that didn’t feature any songs from his previous Northern Soul/Motown-infused record ‘Change the show’, instead choosing to perform tracks from his other four releases.

“London, good evening!” Kane howls, his voice is barely noticeable over the cacophony of guitar and feedback coming through the speakers. One could argue leaving out the melodic pop hooks from the aforementioned album has its drawbacks, but Kane is a savvy operator and knows the affection the fans have for his more guitar-driven punk numbers such as ‘Inhaler’ and ‘Rearrange’, with arms-aloft and singalongs continuing throughout from a crowd with a massively varied age range; it’s a testament to the scouser that it was quite possibly one of the most assorted in terms of age ranges I’ve ever seen at a show before.

His solid high-octane performance endured during the entire 90 minutes with the energy rarely dimming other than the acoustic sections of the evening, which one could argue are a necessity for acts like Kane to allow the sweat-soaked crowd to gather their calm (and some of their belongings in this case).

The undoubted highlight of the set came in the penultimate performance of ‘Come closer’, with the four-piece band spontaneous managing to elongate the banger at the crowd’s delight before he got them repeating the ‘la la la’ in unison for set closer ‘Don’t forget who you are’, as the Camden audience disappeared into the North London night still reciting it.

Miles Kane has become a master of his craft, a true showman who has managed to outlast several of his contemporaries and gained a cult following in the process.