Arctic Monkeys - AM

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.

You Me At Six Top Five

I have some time to write some posts, so I thought a fun thing for me and all three people who read this would be some top fives of some of my favourite bands (I cannot bring myself to rank ten unless I'm in a very fangirly mood, and after the best five or so songs they kind of level out anyway for most artists), either so you can just have some music to listen to if you're bored, or you've heard of the bands and want to give them a try but aren't sure what to start with . . . whatever, I'm not bothered.
As you can tell, we're starting with You Me At Six.

5) Safer To Hate Her
I don't even know what it is that draws me to this one, but it's awesome.


4) Underdog
This one has to be one of their signature songs. If you know You Me At Six you have to know this one, at the very least the chorus.


3) Kiss And Tell
Very first song by You Me At Six that I can recall hearing. It got stuck in my head for weeks, and now I've remembered the song, it's stuck in there again.


2) Crash
This one got recommended to me by a friend when I was just starting to listen to the band, and it sealed the deal for me. It's sad, really not one to listen to if you're feeling like you might cry, but it's so heartfelt and beautiful anyway.


1) Bite My Tongue (feat. Oli Sykes)
I don't know why, probably because it's on the heavier side and I like heavy music, but this one just gets to me more than all their other songs. The lyrics are awesome, and it's so angry, it's brilliant for stamping about when someone's pissed you off

Don Broco - You Wanna Know

I keep getting people telling me I need to listen to Don Broco, and although the first time I heard one of their songs I was somewhat put off, this one is so catchy it makes me inclined to agree when I can stop dancing long enough.

You Me At Six - Lived A Lie

I tend to forget just how much I like You Me At Six. I was hesitant about listening to them at first, for fear of getting the label that a lot of girls get, of only listening to the band because the singer's attractive. Sure, Josh isn't bad looking, but honestly I couldn't care less. When I finally got hold of Sinners Never Sleep, I listened to it a ridiculous amount, and the same with Hold Me Down. They do great music for singing along to, which is great because I love singing along to music.
Lived A Lie is their first release in over a year - the last release wasn't even anything to do with an album, it was the theme for a rollercoaster, which I will never understand - and the You Me At Six fans have been buzzing over it. I, as usual, didn't get to listen to it straight away and have just done so now.
Josh said in an interview - with Kerrang!, I think, seeing as that's where I get all my news - that he reckoned that Lived A Lie is not the smash hit single of the album. It's not meant to be shocking people into going 'wow, how could I have let these guys slip under my radar?', it's supposed to be easing people back into YM@6 being a musical presence. I'd have to agree. It's definitely a song, and it's a much better song, both musically and lyrically, than I could ever write, but it's not slapped me in the face. It's like 'You Me At Six!', not 'YOU ME AT SIX', if you get what I mean.
However, the band have promised bigger hits with their next singles, and Lived A Lie is good enough that I am eagerly anticipating them.

Panic! Are Back!

I know I'm kind of late to the party here, but when my main source of internet is my phone, I tend to be very unwilling to click on links, so there's actually a couple of new songs by various artists that I need to listen to.
I am quite excited about Panic! At The Disco. Back when I first started getting into alternative music (emo, if that's how you insist on seeing it. I won't deny I have my leanings to the dark and angsty), I was drawn to them through the now-infamous I Write Sins Not Tragedies, which led me to getting A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (it's a weird album, but honestly absolutely brilliant as far as I'm concerned). Pretty Odd didn't quite get the same reception as its predecessor, and so it kind of passed me by - I still haven't sat down and listened to it properly as yet, but it sounds completely different to Fever... - but I was all over Vices And Virtues.
Then they went quiet, and they kind of drifted to the back of my mind. Brendon was still vaguely present in my mind through his tweets, but I had a lot of other bands to listen to.
Now, however, they're back. They've got two new songs; Miss Jackson, and This Is Gospel, off their upcoming album Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! (I was quite excited when I realised that's out of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas). So far, I haven't managed to actually listen to them, but from what I've heard from other fans they're following Panic!'s theme of reinventing their musical style with each album, and tagging onto the new deviation of pop punk that their big brother Fall Out Boy created earlier this year with Save Rock And Roll.

The fans were definitely right. It's definitely Panic!, but the slightly dirty but poppy feel to the music is quite Save Rock And Roll-y. I think that's a good thing, because when that album first came out I was kind of mixed about it, but now I and a lot of other fans have adjusted to the new style, it's a perfect time for Panic! At The Disco to start doing this. It's not eyeliner, angst and weird Victorian pantomime type music, like their older stuff. It's a lot more big beats and choruses full of backing singers doing slightly eerie shouting. It's a lot less focused on having complicated lyrics, but there is still a darkness in there that works well against what does sound more pure pop than pop punk or alternative.

I was apprehensive that they wouldn't be able to get me with both songs. Panic! has this way of making each song they do unique in a way that it can be quite difficult to guarantee that you're going to like a whole album based off one or two songs. However, I was proven wrong with this. A bit more upbeat than Miss Jackson, but still with that same kind of defiant feel, this has made me very excited about their new album.

Forgive me for bringing My Chem into this, but I'm seeing a slightly Danger Days-esque trend with my favourite bands these days. What I mean by that is that in the older music of some of these bands, it's just as good but there's a lot more darkness and complicated feelings. Then there comes a point where, in their real lives they battle whatever demons fuelled the previous stuff, and the music they make when they've overcome that tends to be a lot more cheerful, a lot more hopeful. MCR did it with Danger Days after the stress that had been building up throughout the Black Parade era, after getting their personal lives sorted and maturing. Fall Out Boy did it after dealing with their various issues - Patrick has admitted to being quite controlling over how the music was being made to the point of shutting out Andy and Joe, and Pete needed to deal with his excessive fame - and came back to us with Save Rock And Roll. Now, Panic! At The Disco, if the rest of their music follows this trend, are giving us Too Weird To Live . . . as their 'we've grown up' album. They've had a lot of issues with changing band members, and, as P!ATD fans will know, Spencer (drums) has backed out of their current tour to continue recovering from his addictions (well done, seriously Spencer).
Some people might not like that. There are some people out there who feel that artists make their best music while their lives are fucked up, and I will admit that I do really love a lot of the music I've heard that was created during bouts of extreme depression and drug use. But the thing is that we need happy music. We need happy, powerful music that follows on from the message of the previous music, that there are other people out there who suffer, and we need the music that says 'well yeah it's been bad, but we're here now and we've gotten past our problems and we're calm and happy and stable and we're going to make music to show that'.

Purity Ring - Fineshrine

The thing about Purity Ring is that, without realising, I've known about them a while. An acquaintance introduced me to them last November because she needed someone to go and see them at Sound Control with her. They were alright when I listened to them, but I was incredibly ill during the gig so I kind of filed them away as a bad memory. However, after hearing this song on an advert and realising I recognised it, I was somewhat pleasantly surprised. It's a pretty good song, especially since Leeds has opened my eyes further to the world of creepy, slightly trippy music.