Onto the list of rock supergroups that features the likes of Cream, Velvet Revolver, Asia, and Them Crooked Vultures you can now add The Jaded Hearts Club. Comprised of Miles Kane (lead vocals – Last Shadow Puppets), Nic Cester (lead vocals – Jet), Matt Bellamy (bass – Muse), Graham Coxon (guitars – Blur), Jamie Davis (Jamie Davis and Soul Gravy), and Sean Payne (drums – The Zutons), their Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band inspired name comes from the fact the group were originally assembled by Davis to perform Beatles covers at his own birthday party.

Their debut album – You’ve Always Been Here – is still a collection of covers, but now the group have focused on some Northern Soul and Motown classics, as well as a few of the genres’ forgotten gems. The album opens with Bellamy belting out Dame Vera Lynn’s wartime classic We’ll Meet Again, and it’s a rather strange experience. But you need to adapt, and fast because there’s plenty more of these oddities on the way.

The Sonics’ Have Love Will Travel, Shocking Blue’s Long And Lonesome Road and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put A Spell On You are arguably the standouts, each best displaying the undeniable vocal talents of Cester and Kane, while offering enough of a twist on the original to be bringing something new to the table. But there are one or two more pedestrian moments, closing track Fever – sung by an unsettlingly breathless Bellamy – for example, fails to live up to the Little Willie John original and is just a little bit too strange.

There is, however, no denying the talent assembled here, and in lots of places it’s a fun record that could easily soundtrack Davis’s next birthday party, when such things are allowed, of course.

Watch the official video for I Put A Spell On You here.

You’ve Always Been Here tracklist:

1. We’ll Meet Again

2. Reach Out I’ll Be There

3. Have Love Will Travel

4. This Love Starved Heart Of Mine (It’s Killing Me)

5. Nobody But Me

6. Long And Lonesome Road

7. I Put A Spell On You

8. Money (That’s What I Want)

9. Why When The Love Is Gone

10. Love’s Gone Bad

11. Fever

Author: Joe Sharratt

Joe Sharratt is a writer and journalist based in the UK covering music, literature, sport, and travel.