If Alex Turner and Miles Kane had gone pony trekking through North Dakota rather than holidaying in the south of France in 2007, the Last Shadow Puppets might have sounded like Ultimate Painting. Jack Cooper of Mazes and James Hoare of Veronica Falls similarly bro’d down on tour and started an offshoot from their indiepop day jobs in 2014 but, rather than update Walker and Gainsbourg for the modern age over three albums in as many years, Ultimate Painting gave the antique folk and alt-country of the Byrds, Rubber Soul and the third Velvet Underground album a millennial makeover.
Stepping down from bigger halls to mark the tragic passing of the indie label Fortuna Pop! at the last of their Lexington Winter Sprinter festivals, the band’s full range of autumnal ramblings is suited to the intimate club setting. Harmonic pastoral ballads about the joys of orienteering, mingling whiffs of Woodstock and Whitney, give way to punkier folk-rock fare such as Central Park Blues, which could have been ghostwritten by Courtney Barnett. Bluesier still, (I’ve Got the) Sanctioned Blues is what Primal Scream’s Give Out But Don’t Give Up might have sounded like if the strongest substance in the studio had been Haribo Starmix.
Their hazy watercolours often hide dark sketches: Mazes’ motorik bent and breadline urban themes creep into Bills and Monday Morning, Somewhere Central from last year’s Dusk album. But even when their fragile two-part harmonies occasionally make them sound like Teenage Fanclub with rickets, Ultimate Painting exude a ramshackle campfire charm that you could roast roadkill on. Nothing by numbers here.
