Arctic Monkeys’ AM released

First posted 9/13/2020.

AM Arctic Monkeys

Released: September 6, 2013 Peak: 6 US, 13 UK, 3 CN, 11 AU Sales (in millions): 1.4 US, 1.28 UK, 3.02 world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.) Do I Wanna Know? (6/19/13, 70 US, 11 UK, 48 CN, 33 AU, sales: 1 million) R U Mine? (2/27/12, 23 UK, 94 AU) One for the Road (12/9/13, --) Arabella (1/28/14, 70 UK) I Want It All No. 1 Party Anthem Mad Sounds Fireside Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? (8/11/13, 8 UK, 87 CN, 56 AU) Snap Out of It (6/9/14, 82 UK) Knee Socks I Wanna Be Yours Total Running Time: 41:42 The Players: Alex Turner (vocals, guitar) Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals) Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals) Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating: 4.065 out of 5.00 (average of 15 ratings) Quotable: “Absolutely and unarguably the greatest record of their career.” – NME magazine Awards:

About the Album: With their fifth album, the Arctic Monkeys broke a record in the UK by becoming the first band on an independent label to debut at the top of the album chart with their first five albums. WK The album also hit #1 in Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, and Slovenia. WK It was the band’s highest charing album in the U.S. and went platinum. The Arctic Monkeys “forge ahead into bold new territory…neatly splitting the difference between the band’s two personalities – the devotees of barbred British pop and disciples of curdled heavy rock.” AMG AM finds the band “incorporating unapologetic glam stomps, fuzzy guitars, and a decidedly strong rhythmic undercurrent.” AMG “This is vibrant, moody music that showcases a band growing ever stronger with each risk and dare they take.” AMG NME called it “absolutely and unarguably the greatest record of their career.” WK Entertainment Weekly’s Ray Rahman said the album mixes “Velvet Underground melodies [with] Black Sabbath riffs…and has fun doing it.” WK Guitarist James Cook said David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was one of the influences for the album, saying it was one of the only albums they listened to while recording AM. WK Singer Alex Turner cited a wide variety of influences for the album, including Black Sabbath, Dr. Dre, Outkast, Ike Turner, and Aaliyah. WK The album was promoted with six singles. R U Mine? came out more than a year before the album and then Do I Wanna Know? was released three months beforehand. It became the fourth Monkeys’ single to sell more than 200,000 copies in the UK. It charted in the US and sold a million copies there, also picking up a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance. Third single Why Do You Only Call Me When You’re High? became the band’s second top-ten hit in the UK. “Fireplace percolates while…Knee Socks nearly rivals Franz Ferdinand in disco rock.” AMG Josh Homme of Queen of the Stone Ages worked on the record and said, “it’s not disco [as such], but it’s like a modern, dancefloor sexy record.” WK Because Turner’s “is preoccupied with love gone wrong, jealousy, and general misanthropy” AMG the album has “an undercurrent of cynicism.” AMG NME said the album is filled with “tales of wasted phone calls, drunken lunges and late-night confessions.” WK However, “due to the Arctic Moneys’ muscular wallop and musical restlessness, it never feels like the band is wallowing in bleakness.” AMG Notes: On the Polish and Japanese versions of the album, the bonus track “2013” was added. An iTunes version of the album included an EP of five live cuts. The deluxe LP edition included “2013” and “Stop the World I Wanna Get Off with You.”

Resources and Related Links: Arctic Monkeys’ DMDB Encyclopedia entry AMG All Music Guide WK Wikipedia

Arctic Monkeys' Suck It and See released

First posted 12/5/2011; updated 9/12/2020.

Suck It and See Arctic Monkeys

Released: June 6, 2011 Peak: 14 US, 11 UK, 12 CN, 4 AU Sales (in millions): 0.09 US, 0.33 UK, 0.43 world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.) She’s Thunderstorms Black Treacle (1/23/12, --) Brick by Brick The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala (8/15/11, --) Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair (4/16/11, #12 UK) Library Pictures All My Own Stunts Reckless Serenade Piledriver Waltz Love Is a Laserquest Suck It and See (10/31/11, --) That’s Where You’re Wrong Total Running Time: 40:04 The Players: Alex Turner (vocals, guitar) Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals) Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals) Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating: 3.609 out of 5.00 (average of 20 ratings)

About the Album: In 2006, the Arctic Monkeys arrived as the British answer to America’s garage-rock-revival specialists The Strokes. Thanks to effective Internet marketing, the Monkeys were quickly embraced by the U.K. market and the subsequent album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not became the quickest-selling debut in U.K. history. Only five years later, the Monkeys are churning out their fourth album while the Strokes have released only one album since the Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever. On that debut, “snideness was their calling card, if not the entirety of their post-millenial rebel pose. The breathless rockers that characterized their first two records relied on careening tempos and breakneck direction-changes as sonic points of interest, but the name of the game at the time was [singer Alex] Turner’s lyrical invention. Dense and vivid narratives of working-class rogues and dissolute clubbers slashed their way to the listeners’ imaginations…Those songs were observant, trenchant, unpredictable, and often very funny. But, nonetheless, snide. Snide in the very best sense of the word, but still snide.” RL “Then came the third Arctic Monkeys album, Humbug, in 2009, and with it a subtle migration out of the established comfort zone. Largely produced by James Ford (also the dial-twiddler for [the band’s sophomore album] Favourite Worst Nightmare and the new record in question), a few tracks were also set down with Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age acting as overseer, and the smoothing down of the band’s notoriously spiky compositions was a not-unexpected result. The dreaded ‘M’ word (maturity) was bandied about in not a small number of Humbug reviews, but it was hardly a set of toe-tappers and sappy ballads about mortgages and adorable children. If anything, the honing (the Homme-ing?) of Turner’s melodic sensibilities threw the quality of his songwriting into sharper relief. His lyrical twists and turns were as compelling as they’d always been, but freed from the frantic dynamics of the youthful Monkeys, they worked better as pop songs than they did as rapid-fire rhythmic dime-store sociology.” RL Promising a more “vintage style” WK in comparison to the “heavily produced sound of Humbug,” WK the band’s previous album, the Monkeys recorded much of the album “in live takes with producer James Ford in Los Angeles, California, over five weeks in January/February 2011.” WK Singer Alex Turner said “that rather than going into the studio with only rough sketches of songs, and making heavy use of overdubbing, the band focused much of their time on rehearsing together.” WK In a March 19, 2011 interview, drummer Matt Helders said the album would be “a bit more poppy, certainly, than Humbug,” WK the previous album. “A tracklisting full of snappy one-liner titles like ‘All My Own Stunts’, Love Is a Laserquest, and Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” RL “seems to promise a return to the vigorous sarcasm that launched them to domestic stardom.” RL That latter track serves as the first single, having been released in a limited three thousand vinyl copies for Record Store Day on April 16, 2011. WK “Don’t Sit Down” is an “unquestionable highlight” RL which is “driven with sinister determination by a grimly-grinning death-march of a lead riff.” RL “It’s bluesy, potent, swaggering, irresistible nonsense, and it’s wonderful stuff. Turner gleefully gives himself over to the jokey darkness, exhorting someone, anyone to ‘run with scissors’, ‘go into business with a grizzly bear’, and ‘bite the lighting / and tell me how it tastes’. It’s quite hard to picture any other writer/vocalist in rock managing to make a reference to the Macarena sound simultaneously hilarious and ominous, but Turner accomplishes it here.” RL “Don’t Sit Down” may be the first official single, but a video for Brick by Brick preceded it in March. WK The song offers a “numbingly simple Queens of the Stone Age pastiche is so profoundly non-Arctic Monkeys that it’s tough to know what to make of it at all. The nods to their own past are always brief and measured, though; this album was crafted by a band moving inescapably forward.” RL The “starts off strong, with the beguiling” EG and “deceptively romantic” RL She’s Thunderstorms. The song kicks things off with a “lithe, jangling riff” RL that “is characteristic of a band that has gained more than a measure of concern for how they sound, a feature further supported by the surfeit of harmonizing here and elsewhere.” RL That song “and the snappier Black Treacle [are] both fine showcases for Alex Turner’s low-throated, drily stylish vocals. There’s some filler after that, but the taut atmospherics and sly drama keep you interested.” EG “The surprisingly anthemic title track shares the album opener’s musical elements as well as its lovesick tone, but neither song is doe-eyed or naïve about romance. Turner comes across as a weary soul who yearns for a relationship of interconnection but is under no illusions about the minefield that must be crossed to approach it.” RL “The track Piledriver Waltz was first released on Alex Turner’s debut EP, Submarine, where it was credited to Turner as a solo artist.” WK The version on Suck It and See is “a rerecording with the whole band involved.” WK Other cuts “allow some nostalgic Monkeys glory to be recaptured. Library Voices is of debut vintage, and All My Own Stunts features a callback to the title phrase of ‘Dancing Shoes’ from Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.” RL “Ponderous sobriety will never be the way of the Arctic Monkeys, and their prodigious cheekiness has hardly been tempered much on Suck It and See. But Alex Turner and his bandmates are clearly expanding their abilities and getting better at focusing their fire with every release. The result may purposely evade the sublime, but it transcends the snide as well. Perhaps the album title is not so much a crude tease as it is a nervy invitation.” RL

Resources and Related Links: Arctic Monkeys’ DMDB Encyclopedia entry EG Elysa Gardner, USA Today (6/6/11; “Listen Up” column in Life section). RL Ross Langager, PopMatters (6/8/11) WK Wikipedia

Arctic Monkeys released Humbug

First posted 6/8/2011; updated 9/12/2020.

Humbug Arctic Monkeys

Released: August 19, 2009 Peak: 15 US, 12 UK, 6 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): -- US, -- UK, 0.52 world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.) My Propeller (3/22/10, --) Crying Lightning (6/29/09, 12 UK) Dangerous Animals Secret Door Potion Approaching Fire and the Thud Cornerstone (11/16/09, --) Dance Little Liar Pretty Visitors The Jeweller’s Hands Total Running Time: 39:15 The Players: Alex Turner (vocals, guitar) Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals) Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals) Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating: 3.458 out of 5.00 (average of 6 ratings) Quotable: “Humbug makes two things clear: Arctic Monkeys are serious about being in a band, about making music, and they are the first major British band in generations unencumbered by fear or spite for America.” – Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide

About the Album: After becoming wildly successful in the U.K. with their 2006 debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, the Arctic Monkeys quickly released a follow-up with 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare. Showing no signs of slowing down the band had already started working on songs for album #3 “towards the end of summer 2008, and finished it entirely on spring 2009.” WK The resulting album, 2009’s Humbug, was recorded entirely in the United States. As on their previous album, and Turner’s side project, the Last Shadow Puppets’ The Age of the Understatement, the band tapped James Ford as a producer. WK However, they also enlisted Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme. “On first glance, it’s a peculiar pair – the heirs of Paul Weller meet the heavy desert mystic – but this isn’t a team of equals, it’s a big brother helping his little siblings go wayward and get weird.” AMG Homme, “renowned for his collaborations but heretofore untested as a producer” AMG “doesn’t imprint his own views on the Monkeys but encourages them to follow their strange instincts, whether it’s a Nick Cave obsession or the inclination to emphasize atmosphere over energy.” AMG Cave is only one of the influences Turner and the band’s drummer Matt Helders have cited as influences on the album. They also turned to Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jake Thackray, John Cale, and Roky Erickson. WK The result is an album that is “not always immediately accessible or pleasurable to an outside listener” AMG but “the Monkeys still favor angular riffs and clenched rhythms, constructing tightly framed vignettes not widescreen epics.” AMG “They’re working with a darker palette and creating vaguely abstract compositions, sensibilities that extend to Alex Turner’s words too, as he trades keen detail for vivid scrawled impressions. Every element of the album reflects a band testing its limits, seeing where they could – not necessarily will – go next.” AMG “Humbug makes two things clear: Arctic Monkeys are serious about being in a band, about making music, and they are the first major British band in generations unencumbered by fear or spite for America.” AMG Many critics praised “the band’s newfound maturity;” WK Billboard magazine said that the band justifies “the hype by shifting its best qualities into different, equally dazzling shapes” WK while The Record Review said that with Humbug the band “surpasses most of its colleagues in terms of songwriting and performance ability.” WK While Pitchfork’s Joe Tangari noted that the album “isn’t better than either of its predecessors, but it expands the group’s range… and…demonstrates a great deal of staying power for a band that could have imploded before it ever got this far.” WK “While overall response was positive, the album was criticized by some for not containing the same hooks” WK as previous efforts. In particular, Spin called the album “accomplished, but not particularly infectious.” WK

Resources and Related Links: Arctic Monkeys’ DMDB Encyclopedia entry AMG Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide WK Wikipedia

Arctic Monkeys released sophomore album, Favourite Worst Nightmare

Favourite Worst Nightmare Arctic Monkeys

Released: April 23, 2007 Peak: 7 US, 13 UK, 4 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): 0.36 US, 1.0 UK, 1.61 world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival

Tracks: (Click for codes to singles charts.) Brianstorm (4/16/07, 2 UK) Teddy Picker (12/07, 20 UK) D Is for Dangerous Balaclava Fluorescent Adolescent (7/07, 5 UK) Only One Who Knows Do Me a Favour This House Is a Circus If You Were There, Beware The Bad Thing Old Yellow Bricks 505 Total Running Time: 37:18 The Players: Alex Turner (vocals, guitar) Jamie Cook (guitar, vocals) Nick O’Malley (bass, vocals) Matt Helders (drums, vocals)

Rating: 4.022 out of 5.00 (average of 24 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: “Breathless praise is a time-honored tradition in British pop music, but even so, the whole brouhaha surrounding the 2006 debut of the Arctic Monkeys bordered on the absurd. It wasn’t enough for the Arctic Monkeys to be the best new band of 2006; they had to be the saviors of rock & roll. Lead singer/songwriter Alex Turner had to be the best songwriter since Noel Gallagher or perhaps even Paul Weller, and their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, at first was hailed as one of the most important albums of the decade, and then, just months after its release, NME called it one of the Top Five British albums ever.” AMG Instead of basking in the abundance of praise, the Monkeys went right back to work. Favourite Worst Nightmare came out just a little over a year after their debut and the result is “the vibrant, thrilling sound of a band coming into its own.” AMG The album “hardly abandons the pleasures of their debut but instead frantically expands upon them.” AMG “This isn’t a quartet that bashes out simply three-chord rock & roll.” AMG “They’ll play art punk riffs without pretension.” AMG “Born in the ‘80s and raised on the Strokes and the Libertines, they treat all rock as a level playing field, loving its traditions but not seeing musical barriers between generations.” AMG They absorb their influences and “spit it all out in a giddy, cacophonous blend of post-punk and classic rock that sounds fresh.” AMG They “haven’t stumbled on their second album” like those bands did by overthinking it. AMG In fact, Nightmare has been described as a “faster, meaner” WK “more ambitious, heavier” WK album. They “sound like they’ll try anything, which makes this a rougher album in some ways than their debut, which indeed was more cohesive. All the songs on Whatever shared a similar viewpoint, whereas the excitement here is that there’s a multitude of viewpoints.” AMG “It reveals the depth and ambition of the band.” AMG “The Monkeys may start with an infectious riff, but then they’ll violently burst into jagged yet tightly controlled blasts of post-punk squalls or they’ll dress a verse with circular harmonies as they do at the end of Fluorescent Adolescent.” AMG “Their signature is precision, evident in their concise songs, deftly executed instrumental interplay.” AMG There’s also “Turner’s wry wordplay, which is clever but never condescending.” AMG Even the title of the album’s lead single is a play on words. Often mistakenly assumed to be titled “Brainstorm,” the song is actually called Brianstorm, a reference to the song’s protagonist named Brian. The song hit #2 on the UK charts, paving the way for the album to have another big debut like its predecessor. It debuted at #1 on the UK album chart, eventually selling a million copies.

Resources and Related Links: DMDB Encyclopedia entry for Arctic Monkeys AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine WK Wikipedia First posted 6/8/2011; updated 3/13/2022.

Arctic Monkeys “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” hit #1 in the UK

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor Arctic Monkeys

Writer(s): Alex Turner (see lyrics here) Released: October 17, 2005 First Charted: October 9, 2005 Peak: 7 AR, 12 UK, 18 AU, 6 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 0.4 US, 1.8 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 146.0 video, 539.69 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: The early 2000s saw a garage revival led by American groups the Strokes and the White Stripes. Eager to have their own entry in the genre, the UK went all in on embracing the Sheffield-based Arctic Monkeys in 2005. Just a few years earlier, members Alex Turner and Jamie Cook got guitars for Christmas and, with help from bassist Andy Nicholson and drummer Matt Helders, started playing songs by the White Stripes and the Vines. They were “well on the way to joining their idols in the big leagues, thanks largely to the promise shown in a set of demos the band made available for free on the internet.” TB Thanks to that and their reputation for live performances, they’d built a strong fan base before ever releasing a record. It set the group up to be “the most talked about British band in years” TB when “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” debuted at #1 on the UK charts. Alison Howe, a talent booker, said it “felt like a moment that a generation would remember for the rest of their lives.” WK The Monkeys recorded the song with producer Alan Smyth first before trying again with James Ford and Rich Costey. They finally landed on a winning version with producer Jim Abbiss. WK The song features “jagged guitar chords and Turner’s stream-of-consciousness-style vocal about ‘dancing to electro-pop like a robot from 1984.’” TB British music magazine NME said it was “the perfect encapsulation of what it is to be young, pissed, lusty, angry, and skint in modern day Britain.” WK Stylistically, “Dancefloor” is somewhere “between the early-21st-century vogue for scratchy new wave and the confident swagger of 1990s favorites Oasis.” TB Music writer Tom Ewing even said the rise of the band “gave the impression that a return to the Britpop boom was upon us.” WK Their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, became the fastest-selling debut of all time in the UK. when it sold more than 365,000 copies in its first week. SF Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Arctic Monkeys SF Songfacts DT Dave Thompson (2011). 1000 Songs That Rock Your World. Krause Publications: Iola, WI. Page 281. TB Thunder Bay Press (2006). Singles: Six Decades of Hot Hits & Classic Cuts. Outline Press Ltd.: San Diego, CA. Page 315. WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 9/28/2023.