NO offence to Miles Kane, ostensibly one half of The Last Shadow Puppets, but it’s difficult not to view this band as anything other than the side-project of Alex Turner.

For all his songwriting renown, the Arctic Monkey-in-Chief remains an enigmatic, guarded figure – whatever you say he is, that’s what he, well, might be; we’re not really sure – to such an extent that most of the attention on any album he’s involved with is naturally going to focus on what it says about his psyche.

The notion that TLSP might not be a Bernard Sumner/Johnny Marr partnership of equals gains credence on the one track on which Kane is indisputably upstage (Bad Habits), where his palpable excitement can’t excuse some painfully banal yelping and the failure to realise that parody backfires if it’s not clear that it’s parody. The fingerprints found almost everywhere else are Turner’s.

Where the Arctic Monkeys have corners, TLSP have curves. Packing away the Scott Walker influences of the group’s sole previous outing, 2008’s The Age Of The Understatement, Everything… reflects the louche life of California (where Turner and Kane both now live) and the enlisting of Owen Pallett, one of the best strings men in the business. It gives songs like Aviation, Miracle Aligner, the title track and Used To Be My Girl a dusty, dreamy air, far removed from the spikier stuff that Turner’s parent band are noted for.

Smooth and (usually) lyrically smart as Everything… is, however, it also gives off the whiff of a self-satisfied album, straying dangerously close to whatever passes for laddishness on the West Coast of the USA. Lush in sound but often lethargic in nature, it won’t do Kane’s public profile any harm, although his songwriting skills might require further scrutiny. As for Turner, let’s hope he gets his Arctics edge out of storage again soon.

The Last Shadow Puppets play Bridlington Spa on July 12