Guest Album Review: Arctic Monkeys - AM

AM

Arctic Monkeys

Release date: 6th September 2013

Available to stream on Spotify - see Spotify player below

Thanks for this guest review go to Andy Brown.

Welcome to the return of the Arctic Monkeys.  Not just their fifth studio album to be released, but the return of their classic energetic and observational style, with an overlay of sheer sexy darkness.  Fans of “Whatever People Say I Am …” will not be disappointed with the return to form that the Arctic Monkeys have dropped on this football called Planet Earth.  From humble beginnings with the text-titled sleaze-fest that is “R U Mine?”, AM is an incredible album with layers and layers of influences that do not fail to impress.

The album opens with the ominously melancholy “Do I Wanna Know?” perfectly illustrating the seamless marriage of heavy rock sounds with a baseline and structure that would please any R n’ B band.  The track oozes illicit lust, both through its music and lyrics.  The distorted flange-guitar marries very well with the almost monotonous beat, providing an image of poorly-kept secrets that manages to hold throughout the album.  This style continues in AM, with tracks like “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” and the impossible-to-ignore “Knee Socks” managing to maintain the feelings of inkiness with off-beat falsetto, melancholy hooks and deliberately simple drum-beats.  

The album does, however, maintain the energy and anthemic nature that gave the Arctics their breakthrough way back in 2005.  In AM the listener can find a great a delicate use of juxtaposition in music, with both sing-along choruses and darker verses found in tracks like “One For The Road” and “Arabella”.   This itself manages to ensure that AM manages to remain a new album responding to an inspired by “Whatever People Say I Am …”, rather than a backwards-looking indulgence.  Indeed, one of the reasons that the Arctics wrote the album is to enjoy playing it live, as can be seen in this interview.

There is more to AM than a simple verse and chorus contrast, with a myriad of influences cited by the Arctics themselves, any intrepid listener can find Queens of the Stone Age-style guitar solos (“I Want It All”), quasi-rapping (“Knee Socks”) and even an iron-clad ballad (“I Wanna Be Yours”).  The most marked difference is between the obviously Rock n’ Roll guitar laden tracks like “R U Mine?”, “Arabella” and “I Want It All” and the slower, yet equally intense “No. 1 Party Anthem” and “Mad Sounds”.  Yet, some tracks, specifically the percussion-heavy “Firseside” feel more like pop songs.  This variation within the album and even within songs, means that AM is a record that is already dominating a lot of many listeners’ time.

Alex Turner’s lyrics are truly balanced with the music.  The somewhat gothic sexiness of the music is enhanced by the early-morning truths that Alex shares.  The observational nature of the lyrics in much of the Arctic Monkey’s career is not lost here.  A notable mention must go to “Do I Wanna Know?” and “Knee Socks” for a great mix of subtlety and down-to-earth-ness, with clichés deftly avoided but alluded to in lines like: “There’s this tune I’ve found / That makes me think of you somehow” (“Do I Wanna Know?”).  

The juxtaposition found in the music is echoed in the lyrics, with triumph and despair similarly alluded to in tracks like “No. 1 Party Anthem” and “R U Mine?”, but Alex Turner deserves more plaudits his use of enjambment in tracks like “Do I Wanna Know?”.  The lead singer and lyricist has a knack of toying with the length of lines used in verses and choruses that can keep a listener guessing, seen in tracks like “Do I Wanna Know?” and “Knee Socks”.

“Knee Socks” is perhaps the triumph of the album, with a strong beat maintained throughout the song.  On first listening, the track seems to be wholly R n’ B with a hook-like chorus, a quintessentially Hip-Hop breakdown, including falsetto singing that is so close to an Alex Turner rap that it could cause offence.  However, there are slight undertones of the heavy rock sounds that the lads have found in their more recent albums.  These undertones, ironically, appear within the Hip-Hop breakdown with Joshua Homme’s reverberating drawl.

Another song that warrants a mention is the John Cooper Clarke’s poem-turned-ballad “I Wanna Be Yours”.  This song is markedly different from the rest of the album and it listens like AM’s own “A Certain Romance”.  The track itself is relaxed and uplifting, certainly sticking out in comparison to the darkness of the rest of AM.  It is a wonderfully idiosyncratic ballad with sing-along potential and an almost acoustic sound.

The only thing wrong with AM is that it does loose some pace in the middle, with the strongest tracks “Do I Wanna Know?”, “R U Mine?”, “Knee Socks” and “I Wanna Be Yours” coming at the beginning and end of the album.  The third single from the album, “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?” lacks the punch that many of the album tracks pack.  Advice for enjoying this album? Listen to it in the car, slick your hair back and, crucially, don’t treat it as a classic rock album.

Favourite Tracks: “Knee Socks”, “Do I Wanna Know?” and “I Wanna Be Yours”

Score: 9/10