Review: Last Shadow Puppets throws a dark, unexpected twist into ‘Everything You’ve Come to Expect’

In the music video for “Aviation,� the first song on their new album as the Last Shadow Puppets, Alex Turner and Miles Kane play two men forced to dig what look like their own graves by a suave but sadistic crime-boss type.

There’s a woman too, weeping in the back seat of a vintage Rolls-Royce, and we seem meant to understand that she’s been caught carrying on with one of these guys; now her wicked husband is punishing the whole lot. Whatever the specifics, Turner and Kane — both Jason Statham-soulful in their grimy undershirts — are clearly identified as the noble victims in this little drama.

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Yet that’s rarely what they look like on “Everything You’ve Come to Expect,� the second full-length from this British orchestral-pop duo. Due Friday, the album comes nearly a decade after the Last Shadow Puppets’ swooning 2008 debut, “The Age of the Understatement.� In that time, Turner became a global rock star with his primary band, the Arctic Monkeys, while Kane made a pair of solo records following the dissolution of an earlier group, the Rascals.

Now the two live in Los Angeles, which appears to have brought out each man’s inner villain: In song after song, Turner describes the debasement of various characters, often women, with a kind of louche satisfaction, as though he were singing from inside a Guy Ritchie film.

“I’m a phony, I’m a fake, a fraud, a snake,� the singer boasts over the creeping groove of “Used to Be My Girl,� “Gimme all your love so I can fill you up with hate.� Other tunes refer to a “hotel-room free-love revival� and a woman “with trouble written in dirt on her knees.�

Rocker-dude business as usual? Perhaps. But where someone like Axl Rose — to name one proudly womanizing Angeleno — would’ve given these ideas a heroic sweep, the Last Shadow Puppets make the music feel clammy, almost disgusted with itself. On “The Age of the Understatement,� lush horn-and-string arrangements by Owen Pallett provided a sense of old-Hollywood romance; this time the Oscar-nominated composer (who’s also worked with Arcade Fire and Pet Shop Boys) uses screeching violins to summon darker horror-movie vibes.

It’s anyone’s guess if Turner and Kane are indeed playing a role here — whether they’re merely exploring an unsavory viewpoint as they did a more sympathetic one in the “Aviation� video. A recent piece in Spin magazine, by a writer who says Kane came at her creepily in an interview, suggests something else. Either way, the complicated result plainly contradicts its title: For a rock-star victory lap, “Everything You’ve Come to Expect� is anything but.

Twitter: @mikaelwood

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The Last Shadow Puppets

“Everything You’ve Come to Expect�

(Domino)