Top 20 Countdown - no.7

For 2009

No.7 - Scott Matthew - There Is An Ocean That Divides

Scott does it again: a heart wrenching album, full of eloquent, elegiac songs that do not want to leave your mind and your heart. And that voice.

For the 00's

No.7 - The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

Best album of 2008, one of the best of the decade. These guys sure know how to make great music and pick great producers. And that cover.

2008 Top-20 Countdown - No.5

The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement

The girl that launched a thousand reviews... The amazing photograph that graces the cover of the first album by The Last Shadow Puppets (Arctic Monkeys lead singer Alex Turner and lead singer of The Rascals, Miles Kane) has probably been the most written about album cover of this year. But the album is also one of the best to come out in 2008, making even those of us not too keen on Arctic Monkeys music sit up and listen. With a proper mix of orchestral 60's pop (courtesy of Scott Walker and legendary arranger David Axelrod according to the Puppets), wit, drama and panache, the kids made us all bow to their craftsmanship. The songs are brilliant, most of them already sounding like classics, while the production by James Ford, of Simian Mobile Disco (who also plays drums here) is impeccable, aided by the exquisite arrangements of Canadian Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy and former member of the Arcade Fire's string section).

The Last Shadow Puppet girl on the cover

Apart from The Age Of The Understatement by The Last Shadow Puppets being a great album, we have been wondering about the girl on the cover a lot - is this one or two girls? Is she a 60s model or a 00s girl? Who is she? What did she do? So finally we got our answer from the amazing Sam Haskins' blog. The great photographer maintains both a website and a blog and posted this about his brilliant photograph seen on the cover of the album (and the one below on the single cover).

Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane of The Rascals have put together a critically acclaimed new album called The Age of the Understatement with their 'side project' group The Last Shadow Puppets.

The cover is one of the shots from my book FIVE GIRlS (1962). Gill was an art student in Johannesburg in the early sixties. Not a professional model, she just walked into the studio one day and was a total natural in front of the camera.

There were stories of Vietnam soldiers taking copies of Five Girls (often gifted to them by their wives or girlfriends) to war, so Gill was also a Vietnam pinup. The fan mail generated by Five Girls in the 60s included letters from both men and women.

So there... now I wonder how she looks now...