Ridiculous as it may sound, is there any chance we may have underestimated the Arctic Monkeys? Yes, we all loved them when they shuffled into the limelight as fresh-faced nine-year-olds a few years back, forgiving them for treating every interview and media appearance with an enthusiasm they usually reserved for their school’s BCG injections, we thrilled to their cheeky tales of fruit machines, chips, and all other sorts of things that conveniently have long been shorthand in large parts of the press for the Northern working class, and we were all charmed by a singer who sung in a voice more usually heard on stage at the end of Blackpool Pier sometime in the 1930s. But did anyone truly expect them to turn into a band of such substance?
Their debut album exhibited some extraordinarily accomplished, and potentially marked out Alex Turner as a truly brilliant lyricist, but it was such a relief to finally find a British rock band that might have an appeal beyond four blokes wearing trilbies in some Camden gastro-pub that it was possibly overrated in some quarters, there’s a strange lack of depth and invention to the music, and there was always the creeping suspicion that this was as good as it was going to get. However, their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare was twice as good and ten times as coherent- and as is traditional with these things sold about one tenth as much- and coming so soon after their debut clearly marked out the band’s intention for their career to follow a more abstruse and musically challenging path than anyone could have initially predicted.
Roping in Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme to produce their third album sent out a pretty clear signal of intent too: this record was never going to be accused of being ‘a bit heavy on the ballads’. Homme’s beefy production injects about 600mls of anabolic steroids straight into the eyeballs of nearly every track, to the extent that most of the songs strain their muscles so much they’re in danger of popping a blood vessel. Make no mistake, this is a heavy album, and at least initially the band’s more muscular and aggressive sound is as surprising as it is exciting. The experiment works a lot better than you might expect, with neither the songs nor Alex Turner’s voice (a lot deeper and devious sounding here than before) rising to the challenge of not being flattened by the sonic onslaught. It’s hard to shake the feeling though that maybe the Monkeys are trying that little bit too hard to prove their brawniness, especially with the coolest kid in school in the recording studio with them. While the sound they make is undoubtedly thrilling and, you begin to wonder how genuine the change in sound is, which can’t help but lead to a slightly detached experience.
There’s also the creeping suspicion that the Geoff Capes-ing of their sound may have seen the baby being discarded with the bathwater somewhat, as the sledgehammer approach of many of the tracks comes at the loss of much of the charm that was a big part of their old appeal. Once ‘Cornerstone’ slides into view though you simply won’t care anymore- a song so comprehensively lovely that it’s already been invited to be a guest on the Alan Titcshmarch show, and built around a melody that’s so instantly memorable you assume it’s been around since medieval times. The fact that Turner spins so much pathos, beauty and meaning out of what is essentially a tale of getting of with someone you meet in a pub is just one example among many on this record (see also his acknowledgment of the charged erotic potential of Pick n’ Mix on ‘Crying Lightning’) that he is fast growing into one of the greatest lyricists this country has ever produced.
Their debut album exhibited some extraordinarily accomplished, and potentially marked out Alex Turner as a truly brilliant lyricist, but it was such a relief to finally find a British rock band that might have an appeal beyond four blokes wearing trilbies in some Camden gastro-pub that it was possibly overrated in some quarters, there’s a strange lack of depth and invention to the music, and there was always the creeping suspicion that this was as good as it was going to get. However, their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare was twice as good and ten times as coherent- and as is traditional with these things sold about one tenth as much- and coming so soon after their debut clearly marked out the band’s intention for their career to follow a more abstruse and musically challenging path than anyone could have initially predicted.
Roping in Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme to produce their third album sent out a pretty clear signal of intent too: this record was never going to be accused of being ‘a bit heavy on the ballads’. Homme’s beefy production injects about 600mls of anabolic steroids straight into the eyeballs of nearly every track, to the extent that most of the songs strain their muscles so much they’re in danger of popping a blood vessel. Make no mistake, this is a heavy album, and at least initially the band’s more muscular and aggressive sound is as surprising as it is exciting. The experiment works a lot better than you might expect, with neither the songs nor Alex Turner’s voice (a lot deeper and devious sounding here than before) rising to the challenge of not being flattened by the sonic onslaught. It’s hard to shake the feeling though that maybe the Monkeys are trying that little bit too hard to prove their brawniness, especially with the coolest kid in school in the recording studio with them. While the sound they make is undoubtedly thrilling and, you begin to wonder how genuine the change in sound is, which can’t help but lead to a slightly detached experience.
There’s also the creeping suspicion that the Geoff Capes-ing of their sound may have seen the baby being discarded with the bathwater somewhat, as the sledgehammer approach of many of the tracks comes at the loss of much of the charm that was a big part of their old appeal. Once ‘Cornerstone’ slides into view though you simply won’t care anymore- a song so comprehensively lovely that it’s already been invited to be a guest on the Alan Titcshmarch show, and built around a melody that’s so instantly memorable you assume it’s been around since medieval times. The fact that Turner spins so much pathos, beauty and meaning out of what is essentially a tale of getting of with someone you meet in a pub is just one example among many on this record (see also his acknowledgment of the charged erotic potential of Pick n’ Mix on ‘Crying Lightning’) that he is fast growing into one of the greatest lyricists this country has ever produced.
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