Following on the heels of their 2015 full-length album Everything You've Come to Expect, the Last Shadow Puppets released the shorter if no less compelling The Dream Synopsis EP. As with their previous efforts, Dream Synopsis is an evocative, orchestral-tinged production featuring arrangements from longtime collaborator Owen Pallett. Here, the Last Shadow Puppets duo of Arctic Monkeys vocalist Alex Turner and vocalist/guitarist Miles Kane deliver two re-recorded versions of songs off Everything You've Come to Expect ("Aviation" and "The Dream Synopsis") as well as a handful of well-curated cover songs. In keeping with the Last Shadow Puppets' love for vintage '60s-inspired productions, Dream Synopsis has a live-in-the-studio sound, as if they recorded each song live in one take. They've even gone so far as to leave some of the band's pre-song banter, as well as various bits of the engineer's comments. Of the newly recorded originals, "Aviation" sounds especially good with the live treatment, benefiting from the cavernous studio atmosphere. Similarly compelling are the group's literate, cheeky rendition of Leonard Cohen's dramatic "Is This What You Wanted" and the frenetic, wild-eyed take on the Fall's "Totally Wired." In fact, the covers here are so confidently performed and arranged that they sound close to definitive. They also fit nicely into the band's longstanding penchant for adding wryly delivered covers to concert set lists. Ultimately, any of the tracks on The Dream Synopsis EP could have just as easily been included on Everything You've Come to Expect. That said, the EP works quite well as a swaggering coda to that recording, a kind of final summation of the full-length album's arty, hedonistic theatricality. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi

1		Aviation
2		Les Cactus
3		Totally Wired
4		This Is Your Life
5		Is This What You Wanted
6		The Dream Synopsis

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