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

The White Stripes' Elephant released

Elephant The White Stripes

Released: April 1, 2003 Peak: 6 US, 12 UK, 5 CN, 4 AU Sales (in millions): 2.1 US, 0.86 UK, 5.7 world (includes US and UK) Genre: garage rock revival

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Seven Nation Army (3/8/03, 76 US, 12 AR, 1 MR, 7 UK, 17 AU) Black Math There’s No Home for You Here I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself (8/5/03, 25 MR, 13 UK, 54 AU) In the Cold, Cold Night I Want to Be the Boy You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket Ball and Biscuit The Hardest Button to Button (8/9/03, 8 MR, 23 UK, 54 AU) Little Acorns Hypnotize The Air Near My Fingers Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine It’s True That We Love One Another Total Running Time: 49:56 The Players: Jack White (vocal, guitar, piano) Meg White (drums, vocals)

Rating: 4.393 out of 5.00 (average of 30 ratings) Quotable: “Everything rock should be.” – Goliath Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: The Stripes exploded out of Detroit with a minimalist garage-blues attack: just Jack White on guitar and Meg White on drums, taking on the world. These kids insisted they were a brother and sister, even after people learned they were secretly a divorced couple. But against all odds, the low-budget duo became a global sensation for their sheer rock power” RS’20 after their third album, White Blood Cells, sold more than a half million copies and made stars of the duo. For their follow-up, Elephant, the White Stripes “built out the raw garage rock from their first three albums into an entirely re-imagined sound, taking their pissed-off swagger and channeling it into ambition: blistering blues, whimsical folk, Stooges-esque punk, contemplative love tunes.” GQ Elephant “sounds even more pissed-off, paranoid, and stunning than its predecessor.” AMG It “seethes with raw desperation and lust.” RS’20 “It’s more consistent, exploring disillusionment and rejection with razor-sharp focus.” AMG It is “everything rock should be; it’s fiery and loud on one track, soft and slow on the next, with poignant lyrics and absolutely devastating electric guitar.” GL “In case we’d forgotten, we were reminded that Jack can fucking shred on guitar. GQ “This album contains some of the finest guitar work of this, or any, generation, both from a technical standpoint and an affective standpoint.” GL “You can almost feel the breeze from the amps on your face as the riffs strut out – and he squeezed more tone out of the electric guitar than almost anyone else that decade.” GU The album “cemented Jack White’s reputation as a musical purist” PM and “much-lampooned fetish for analogue production.” GU “By recording the album entirely on pre-1960s equipment, White encapsulated the gritty open-wound rawness of the early delta blues masters he is heavily influenced by. Yet there is an indisputable modernism to Elephant that makes…[the White Stripes as] fresh sounding today as they did” PM then. “Chip-on-the-shoulder anthems like the breathtaking opener, Seven Nation Army, which is driven by Meg White’s explosively minimal drumming, and The Hardest Button to Button, in which Jack White snarls ‘Now we're a family!’ – one of the best oblique threats since Black Francis sneered ‘It’s educational!’ all those years ago – deliver some of the fiercest blues-punk of the White Stripes’ career.” AMG “It’s now impossible to imagine a world without ‘Seven Nation Army,’ chanted from football terraces to political rallies.” GL What has been “coined the most recognizable riff in rock” GL “set the template for Elephant: brooding moods, measured out in eighths by Meg White, would tip over into cathartic squalls of blues rock.” GU “There’s No Home for You Here sets a girl’s walking papers to a melody reminiscent of ‘Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground’ (though the result is more sequel than rehash), driving the point home with a wall of layered, Queen-ly harmonies and piercing guitars, while the inspired version of I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself goes from plaintive to angry in just over a minute, though the charging guitars at the end sound perversely triumphant.” AMG “At its bruised heart, Elephant portrays love as a power struggle, with chivalry and innocence usually losing out to the power of seduction. I Want to Be the Boy tries, unsuccessfully, to charm a girl’s mother.” AMG The “twisted acoustic soul” RS’11 of You’ve Got Her in Your Pocket, “a deceptively gentle ballad, reveals the darker side of the Stripes’ vulnerability, blurring the line between caring for someone and owning them with some fittingly fluid songwriting.” AMG “The battle for control reaches a fever pitch on the ‘Fell in Love with a Girl’-esque Hypnotize, which suggests some slightly underhanded ways of winning a girl over before settling for just holding her hand.” AMG “Jack plays guitar hero” RS’20 in “the show-stopping Ball and Biscuit. [It is] seven flat-out seductive minutes of preening, boasting, and amazing guitar prowess” AMG and “electric-blues freakery” RS’11 “that ranks as one the band’s most traditionally bluesy (not to mention sexy) songs.” AMG “Interestingly, Meg’s star turn, In the Cold, Cold Night, is the closest Elephant comes to a truce in this struggle, her kitten-ish voice balancing the song’s slinky words and music.” AMG “While the album is often dark, it’s never despairing; moments of wry humor pop up throughout, particularly toward the end. Little Acorns begins with a sound clip of Detroit newscaster Mort Crim’s Second Thoughts radio show, adding an authentic, if unusual, Motor City feel. It also suggests that Jack White is one of the few vocalists who could make a lyric like ‘Be like the squirrel’ sound cool and even inspiring.” AMG “Likewise, the showy Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine – on which White resembles a garage rock snake-oil salesman – is probably the only song featuring the word ‘acetaminophen’ in its chorus.” AMG “It’s True That We Love One Another, which features vocals from Holly Golightly as well as Meg White, continues the Stripes’ tradition of closing their albums on a lighthearted note.” AMG “Almost as much fun to analyze as it is to listen to, Elephant overflows with quality – it’s full of tight songwriting, sharp, witty lyrics, and judiciously used basses and tumbling keyboard melodies that enhance the band's powerful simplicity (and the excellent The Air Near My Fingers features all of these).” AMG “Crucially, the White Stripes know the difference between fame and success; while they may not be entirely comfortable with their fame, they've succeeded at mixing blues, punk, and garage rock in an electrifying and unique way ever since they were strictly a Detroit phenomenon. On these terms, Elephant is a phenomenal success.” AMG

Resources and Related Links: AMG All Music Guide review by Heather Phares GL Goliath “10 Great Rock Albums of the 21st Century” GQ GQ (8/5/2014). “The 21 Albums from the 21st Century Every Man Should Hear” GU Guardian (9/13/2019). “The 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century” PM PopMatters.com (10/28/2020). “The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s” RS’11 Rolling Stone (7/8/2011). “100 Best Albums of the 2000s” RS’20 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/24/2008; last updated 5/1/2022.

Radiohead’s Kid A released

Kid A Radiohead

Released: October 2, 2000 Peak: 11 US, 12 UK, 12 CN, 2 AU Sales (in millions): 1.48 US, 0.3 UK, 3.48 world (includes US and UK) Genre: experimental alternative rock

Tracks: Song Title (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to singles charts. Everything in Its Right Place Kid A The National Anthem How to Disappear Completely Treefingers Optimistic (10/7/00, 10 MR) In Limbo Idioteque Morning Bell Motion Picture Soundtrack Total Running Time: 49:56 The Players: Colin Greenwood (bass) Jonny Greenwood (guitar, keyboards) Ed O’Brien (guitar, effects, backing vocals) Philip Selway (drums, percussion) Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, keyboards)

Rating: 3.660 out of 5.00 (average of 20 ratings) Quotable: “The weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but it’s also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be.” – Josh Tyrangiel/ Alan Light, Time Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Album: “Radiohead’s fourth album, released in October 2000, remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history. The band had the freedom to do whatever it wanted after its 1997 alt-rock breakthrough, OK Computer.” RS’20 Bassist Colin Greenwood said, “Everyone expected us to become this U2 type of band, with that stadium credibility.” RS’20 Instead, the band “said to hell with commercialism and put art in the driving seat.” FO While OK Computer is considered Radiohead’s ultimate masterpiece” EB Kid A is “the sound of the biggest band in the land reinventing itself before our eyes.” PM Lead singer Thom Yorke said the album was “like getting a massive eraser out and starting again.” RS’11 “After Kid A, everybody had to pay attention…It doesn’t want any fairweather fans or looky-loos screeching past.” FO “Rather than return to a straight ahead guitar sound after OK Computer, Radiohead went further down the experimental rabbit hole” TL “with a disc of complex electronic explorations.” EW’09 Yorke opted “to put down his guitar and embrace the glacial beauty of abstract electronics, glitchy beats, and the challenge of free-form composition.” RS’20 With producer Nigel Godrich, the band “created an enigma of slippery electronics and elliptical angst, sung by Yorke in an often indecipherable croon.” RS’11 He acknowledged that “It was difficult for the others [in the band], ’cause when you’re working with a synthesizer it’s like there’s no connection.” RS’20 “What emerged was at once scary and enveloping, pitched between deep alienation and profound tenderness.” RS’20 “It is rich and luxurious but supremely complex and highly textured.” FO This is “the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but it’s also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be.” TL With Kid A, “Radiohead made the first true rock of the future,” RS’11 “a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century.” RS’20 It “has proved to be the band’s most influential record” EB and “easily the most successful electronica album from a rock band – it doesn’t even sound like a rock band, even if it does sound like Radiohead.” AMG Yorke himself said, ““I find it difficult to think of the path we’ve chosen as ‘rock music.’” RS’20 “From the spine-tingling four-note downward melody that opens Everything in Its Right Place” GU and its “womblike, ambient flow,” RS’20 “it was clear that Radiohead had taken a huge leap into colder, stranger territory.” GU “The heavily Cuisinarted voice of Thom Yorke declar[es] ‘Yesterday I woke up sucking on a lemon,’ and only gets cheerier from there.” TL “Cold to the core, Kid A made alienation sound so alluring.” EB This is the “opposite of easy listening” TL “Instead of simply adding club beats or sonic collage techniques, Radiohead strive to incorporate the unsettling ‘intelligent techno’ sound of Autechre and Aphex Twin” AMG by “embracing samplers, sequencers and, to the eternal dismay of drummer Phil Selway, a drum machine.” TL “To their immense credit, Radiohead don’t sound like carpetbaggers, because they share the same post-postmodern vantage point as their inspirations.” AMG The electronic influences that had filtered into OK Computer reached maturity – most spectacularly on techno anthem Idioteque.” GU With its “gizmo-groove paranoia” RS’20 it “seems to be about an evacuation or apocalypse, underscored by a driving and syncopated loop of electronic percussion and a moving set of four sampled chord inversions from avant-garde classical music.” PM “The closest thing to riffing…was the fuzz-bass lick” RS’11 in “the free-jazz implosion The National Anthem.” RS’20 It “rode a driving four-measure bass line to chaotic joy, allowing a group of eight saxophones and brass to play like a Mingus band on free-jazz amphetamines.” PM “Yorke’s loathing of celebrity inspired the contrary beauty” RS’11 of the “delicate and shimmering” PM How to Disappear Completely, “with its watery orchestration and his voice flickering in and out of earshot.” RS’11 Meanwhile, “the guitars in Morning Bell sounded more like seabirds” RS’11 and Yorke’s “electronically squished pleading in Kid A sounded like a baby kicking inside a hard drive.” RS’11 “OK Computer required many plays before revealing the intricacies of its densely layered mix; here, multiple plays are necessary…to get a handle on quiet, drifting, minimally arranged songs with no hooks.” AMG “Of course, the natural reaction of any serious record geek is that if the music demands so much work, it must be worth it – and at times, that supposition is true.” AMG “About half of the songs positively shimmer with genius,” AMG but Kid A is “self-consciously alienating and difficult.” AMG For some that will mean that “your tenth listen is better than your first and your hundredth best of all.” PM For others, the album may come across as seeming “deeper than it actually is.” AMG Notes: A collector’s edition of the album added a second disc of live recordings.

Resources and Related Links: AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine EB East Bay Times (12/9/2009). “Here Are the Top 25 Albums of the Decade” by Jim Harrington EW’09 Entertainment Weekly (12/3/2009). “10 Best Albums of the Decade” FO Far Out (7/16/2021). “The 21 Best Albums of the 21st Century” by Jack Whatley, Joe Taysom, and Tom Taylor GU Guardian (9/13/2019). “The 100 Best Albums of the 21st Century” PM PopMatters.com (10/28/2020). “The 100 Best Albums of the 2000s” RS’11 Rolling Stone (7/8/2011). “100 Best Albums of the 2000s” RS’20 Rolling Stone (9/22/2020). “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” TL Time (11/13/06). All-TIME 100 Albums” by Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 6/2/2022.