The Little Flames sputtered out way too soon. Counting a young Miles Kane as guitarist, this Liverpudlian outfit – part of the Deltasonic stable back in 2006 alongside The Zutons and The Coral – stirred nuggets of Gainsbourg, garage rock, krautrock and Motown into their serrated indie pop brew on singles such as ‘Goodbye Little Rose’ and ‘Put Your Dukes Up, John’.
Their debut album ‘The Day Is Not Today’, recorded in 2006 at Sweden’s Tambourine studios with producer Tore Johansson, threatened to see their sound expand into 4k cinematic splendour but, with the record finished bar the barcode, the band split up in 2007. Kane, of course, went on to form The Rascals and make history as the Brain Fantana to Alex Turner’s Ron Burgundy in The Last Shadow Puppets. In fact, The Little Flames come fully Arctic Monkey-approved: The Little Flames’ second single, ‘Put Your Dukes Up, John’, was covered by Arctic Monkeys after the two bands toured together.
Now, as part of Deltasonic’s 2016 reissue program, this lost gem is finally to see the light of day. “I’m excited to finally be able to drop the needle in this particular groove!” Miles says. “I had a lot of good times with The Flames and I have very fond memories of making this record. I’m delighted that everyone is able to now hear what we collectively created.”
Founding member Mat Gregory explains further. “We did the first sessions for ‘The Day is Not Today’ with Central Nervous System AKA Joe Fearon in Liverpool, and then completed it with Tore Johansson in Malmö, Sweden, which made sense of some of the wildness and brought out the atmosphere that we were looking for. The Little Flames’ music always had an inherent darkness about it, but here we wanted to build on that with a different kind of drama, something a little more cinematic and a little less impetuous.”
Listen to the track ‘Today Is Not The Day’ here: