The Haystack

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The student news site of Wheat Ridge High School

The Haystack

The student news site of Wheat Ridge High School

The Haystack

Arctic Monkeys AM Review

Picture+courtesy+of+Arcticmonkeys.com
Picture courtesy of Arcticmonkeys.com

By: Daniela Santos

On Sept. 10 the Arctic Monkeys released their fifth LP, AM, and have yet to disappoint critics and their audience.

Picture courtesy by Arcticmonkeys.com
Picture courtesy of Arcticmonkeys.com

For first-time spectators of the band, it’s a good listen if you’re a fan of contemporary R&B and British rock. A fair warning to anybody who wants to become a fan of the group: it will be difficult to listen to this one album and be able to pick out what the English quartet from Sheffield has accomplished in the past seven years.

The characteristic that makes the album desirable for longtime fans is the band’s ability to go through seamless sound transformations that they have been able to present since their 2006 debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. In their early days, the Monkeys loudly played their drums and guitars and were able to call out posers and complain about living life in their teens (a topic that anyone can relate too) while still keeping a sense of humor that lets the listener recognize that they don’t take themselves too seriously. Their first change of sound was the third LP Humbug where Alex Turner, Matt Helders, Jaime Cook and Nick O’Malley slowed down and altered their indie-rock sound into a darker, looser, rock noise. This was mainly due to their producer, Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme, who throughout the years has been a reoccurring name in the band’s credits. This fourth album Suck It and See sounded further along the pop side in comparison to the previous LP, and it’s easy to tell that singer Alex Turner was in love with a special lady.

AM is no exception to the Arctic Monkeys’ evolution, especially when it comes to their wording. Song writer, composer, guitarist, and lead singer Turner (acclaimed to be one of the greater lyricists of his time) is to thank for his lyrics that have frequently been able to dazzle his audience with frank yet poetic vocals. The entire collection of the fifth LP is a big representation of the bands growth dated back from their “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor” days.  Album highlight “Arabella” may be my personal favorite track on the record due to its Black Sabbath inspiration, catchy retro guitar riff, and its lines that make the lady in question mesmerizing, “Wraps her lips round the Mexican coke/ Makes you wish that you were the bottle/ Takes a sip of your soul.”

The contemporary R&B vibe of drunk late night cruises around town appear also on the album with self explanatory titles such as “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”. A noticeable new sound change is the consistent falsetto infused backing courtesy of none other than O’Malley and Helders (with some cameos from Homme).

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AM begins and ends appropriately. Opening track “Do I Wanna Know?” will make it tempting to stomp along to the infectious drums whose sound seems like it could be the perfect companion to the following rhythmic track “R U Mine?” The sound mellows down towards the end and concludes with a lovely song filled with metaphors (“I Wanna Be Yours”) that, ironically, were not written by Turner, instead by poet John Cooper Clarke, “I wanna be your vacuum cleaner/ Breathing in your dust/ If you like your coffee hot/ Let me be your coffee pot,”

The LP has many titles with question marks. However the songs don’t seem to fully answer the issue; this may be symbolic of the Arctic Monkeys’ career. It’s not known what’s next for the Arctic Monkeys and if they’ll succeed in their next experiment, but what is known is their ability to be unpredictable. This has been implied since the beginning. Don’t believe me? Simply read the title of their debut.

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