RICH in story telling and soaked in statement style, The Last Shadow Puppets’ second release really is a seductive piece of work. Personally, Arctic Monkeys woke me up at sixteen-years-old and have since took me on a musical journey that’s seen me stop off at Black Sabbath and Queens of the Stone Age along the way. Thus, the Turner and Miles coupling was a “knock your socks off” type of surprise back in 2008 and they’ve certainly not disappointed with this twisting new release.

Whether you’re a fan of Turner or not, you should delve into this with an open mind. Recent live shows have shown an extra greased up Turner on display, swooning and crooning like a pro as Kane quietly rips the stage apart and, at times, steals the show.

Recorded in Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio, which also happened to be the Malibu home to The Band in their Last Waltz heyday, Kane describes the duo’s progression from The Age of The Understatement to where they are today as a “balls have dropped” type of experience. And he’s right. Influences on this record aren’t necessarily as stark or as obvious than they were on the predecessor. There’s still love lingering throughout, but it’s grown up love, smothered in lyrics, riffs and a style that really resonates.

With Owen Pallett back on arrangements, the duo once again handpicked Pallett as the ‘Puppet Master’. An important question presents itself as you divulge tracks such as ‘Aviation’ and ‘Miracle Aligner’, how influential has place been to Kane and Turner this time around?

London, Paris and LA all fuel the stories laid bare in the release and it’s inspirations are as varied as those places in the world. Todd Rundgren and the Ned Doheny album Hard Candy poke through. Whilst most interestingly, Paul Weller’s Style Council glimmers through on tracks such as ‘The Dream Synopsis’ showing similarities to the likes of ‘The Paris Match’ from Cafe Bleu. Then there’s the classical sounding influences from the orchestral soul of Isaac Hayes, scored in 1969 by Detroit arranger Johnny Allen.

Talking about these influences, “I definitely wasn’t listening to The Style Council when we made the first Puppets record,” Turner admits. “With ‘Long Hot Summer’ there’s a sort of shimmery quality to that that we tried to introduce into the sonics of this album, and even melodically.”

What stands out as the most exciting aspect of this record though, is the vocal progression of both Turner and Kane. The classic waltz percussion of ‘Sweet Dreams TN’ is a modern love song with Turner’s vocals at their best. With his crooning Sheffield twang in tact and over the top expression in lines like ‘everyone’s a dick without you baby and I’m falling in love….” make this track a true standout. ‘Sweet Dreams, TN’, is Turner at his finest hour, crooning like a young Roy Orbison beautifully through bolero-driven lyrics of love: “You’re the first day of Spring with a septum piercing,” bringing his feelings of girls and love bang into 2016.

And in contrast, title track ‘Everything You’ve Come to Expect’ takes us into the realm of Curt Boettcher with its bittersweet sunshine pop. LA’s definitely responsible for softening the edges of the sound on the new release, ‘Used To My Girl’ is rock ‘n’ roll, but Kane’s gentle vocals soften the harsher style we’ve been used to on their other projects. Lyrically, the record is filled with sacred riddles and confessions that highlight the immense unique talent of Turner as a songwriter.

Where the debut explored the fantastic world of 60’s pop, this follow-up isn’t too far removed and it’s also no surprise that several of the songs on Everything You’ve Come to Expect have been germinating ever since the Monkeys came off the road after touring the mighty AM in November 2014. “We’ve been writing these tunes sporadically over the last couple of years,” says Turner. The likes of ‘She Does The Woods’ and ‘Pattern’ could have indeed found themselves on those Monkey albums.

Snarly, seductive and melodically pining at its best, with punk spliced in for good measure through the likes of single ‘Bad Habits’, Everything You’ve Come to Expect is full of interesting twists and turns, the band flipping the script in an effortless way. So is it Everything That You’ve Come To Expect? It’s an open and expansive record, it’s a romantic blurry fury. “He was born to blow your mind, or something along those lines.” Expect the unexpected. And a bit of everything in-between; that’s the buzz of it.