Arctic Monkeys are a strange band. When they first started off they were definitely excellent already - who doesn't love 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor'? - but they were so, so different to how they are now. They were the sort-of scruffy band of boys from Sheffield with fast songs and clever lyrics. Arctic Monkeys were one of the first bands that I was old enough to really appreciate, and I've had Whatever People Say I Am That's What I'm Not and Favourite Worst Nightmare for years. I always admired the way Alex Turner plays with words in his songs, the sort of humorous touch he adds to songs despite their usually mundane topics ("Oh you've saved me," she screams down the line/ "The band were fucking wank and I'm not having a nice time") and his voice, which brings a refreshing change to the usual faux-American accent so many artists adopt.
Then, somehow, they kind of drifted off my radar. I was vaguely aware of the work they were producing, but never looked it up past the occasional listen to 'Crying Lightning'.
By pure chance, I've rediscovered them. I was in the car with my mother, and 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?' was on. We discussed its relevance to some of our friends, and promptly forgot about it.
A few weeks later, and I find myself listening to that same song over and over. It's a good song, I think, a damn good one, but different to their older stuff. Their earlier work is a lot louder and more aggressive, whereas this is subtler, the kind of music that sits in the cafe in a black and white film smoking a cigarette. You don't get hit in the face with it, but it sneaks up behind you and catches you that way instead.
It left me intrigued to find out what else they were up to, and as it turns out, they've been up to releasing AM. I'll admit, as a review, this is a bit slow on the uptake given that it was released here on the 9th, but I don't think I've missed it completely.
Track one, 'Do I Wanna Know?' starts very simply, just a slow drum beat. It's joined by a lazy guitar and Alex's singing about "this tune I've found that makes me think of you somehow and I play it on repeat", the words natural enough that he sounds almost as if he's speaking normally and rhyming by coincidence. Then the chorus hits, and you find yourself swaying in your seat to keep with the beat.
A lot of people have been going on about 'R U Mine?', the track that follows. It sounds a little more similar to their older music, a bit more noise involved. It's good, but I don't think it's quite my favourite so far. It jars a little with Do I Wanna Know?, so maybe it's just in the wrong place.
After that, they return to the slow, moody style they seem to be sticking to now, a sort of gloomy but still romantic tone that comes up throughout the songs - I just really love lyrics - with lines like "when you tell everybody to go, will you pour me one for the road?". It is amazing the way they manage to tell stories through the songs, the music and the words not being specific but giving you a sort of wink, like we all know what's going to happen next.
I do like this darker style, but by the time it reaches 'Arabella', it's getting a little bit same-y. The drum beat and the guitar, on occasion, sounds so similar that if you weren't concentrating properly it could almost sound like this album was just one long slow song.
However, just where it was needed, 'I Want It All' brings a refreshing change of tempo. It's like a more expertly done blend of the (comparative) noisiness of R U Mine and the other slower songs, still very cool and and nonchalant (can you say that about songs?), but with enough going on in it to keep you bobbing about.
'No. 1 Party Anthem' sounds very deliberately like the slow song the DJ puts on at weddings when everyone's a bit drunk and emotional. It sounds softer than the other songs, but still carries what appears to be a somewhat typical Arctic Monkeys theme of awkwardly trying to pick up a girl in a bar.
'Mad Sounds' is even more laid back than the rest of the album, so much so that it's nearly horizontal. Another 'we're having a break now kind of song', again it's probably not my favourite, but it's making AM make a lot more sense now. They've kept the same mood going throughout, but in such a subtle way that you almost can't tell - it's either an album you need to have on fully in the background, or on loud enough to concentrate, because it feels like there's a story going on here and it won't make sense if you don't hear the whole thing.
'Fireside' definitely does give the feeling that the album's gone through some sort of transformation. I hate to use the same word over and over, but 'subtle' for me is AM's watchword here, and it's the only one word I can find that fits. This song's bringing the speed back up again, gearing us for the finale - it is a pretty short record - but it sounds different.
Here's my favourite; 'Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?'. The beat, the lyrics, the whole thing, it's brilliant. It's the kind of song you put on while you've got your headphones in and you want to give yourself a bit of a strut as you walk round town, as well as sounding suitably kind of trippy.
Then comes 'Snap Out Of It'. This one really makes me wonder if Alex wrote these songs while frequenting family parties, hiding behind the buffet table with a notepad and pen as he watched the mums and dads doing their Mum-And-Dad-Dancing. This one doesn't sound quite like any of the others on the album, making more use of the backing vocals and which is awesome, but it also leaves me wanting a lot more. It feels like they started with the raw elements of the music they wanted to make, that are awesome individually, but started mixing them together part way through.
Thankfully it continues with 'Knee Socks', which has the aforementioned stampy drumbeat ; the difference is that they've paid more attention to the guitars here. It's doing romance songs in a way that makes me much less annoyed about the amount of songs there are out there about romance. It sounds like the way real people do it.
I had a hunch about this song and followed it, and it turns out this song is actually originally a piece written by the famous John Cooper Clarke. I won't claim to know anything about it beyond that he wrote the words, but this gloomy, lonely version pulls off those words fairly well (further research - reading NME - has revealed that JCK is something of an inspiration for Alex Turner, which is evident even when you've seen as little of the former's work as I have).
It's maybe not an album I'd take with me to a desert island, but it's definitely one I'm putting on my Christmas list. Although it does get just a little bit tiring just around the middle, I find it a refreshing new addition to my music library, right when I was getting bored of all the music I'm familiar with. A friend of mine said a few days ago that "the Arctic Monkeys have become the kind of band that the Arctic Monkeys used to laugh at". That may be their own thoughts, that may be a quote, I don't know, but I think that
a) it's probably true, but
b) if that means they make songs like this, I really don't think that's such a bad thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment