Humbug (released 24/08/2009)
You can say what you like about Arctic Monkeys but you can’t deny them the uniqueness to remain modest and shy despite their effortless success. Back in 2006 Whatever People Say I am That’s what I’m not broke the record after being the fastest selling debut in British History and won the Mercury Prize that year.
Favourite Worst Nightmare also went straight to number one and won the album of the year at the Brit Awards. They’ve added celebrity girlfriends, rappers and producers to their circle and yet still leave the cockiness to Lady GaGa's wardrobe.
Hear them in any interview and they can barely string a confident sentence together. Even at a gig you’ll notice how Alex Turner is much more comfortable behind his instrument of tricks, almost as if it still hasn’t sunk in! They’d rather let the music do the talking and it’s got something new to say.
The tone of their third release is subdued and slow-burning and is far more mature than the ‘…dancefloor’ days. But they needed the hit filled radio-friendly debut, with its witty and articulate lyrics to get Queens’s Of The Stoneage Josh Homme after the Sheffield lads. He took the band under his rugged wing and jetted them off to the American Mojave desert to co-produce the album.
In their own words the new album is a humbug because like the sweet, it may appear to be a familiar mint, but once you suck the hard shell, you get a chewy sweet.
It’s the album that you may not expect from them, unless you liken the instrumentation to that of Alex’s side project The Last Shadow Puppets.
The previous chart-topping albums are the jellybeans of the pick n mix discography (you know what you’re gunna get, it tastes good) and as much as that concept worked very well for them, they’re not afraid to get away from that. Humbug will give them the experimental status if nothing else.
Pretty Visitors, which has already grabbed everyone’s attention with its cheeky philosophy “What came first the chicken or the dickhead” is their heaviest ear-pounding song to date with it’s beguiling sharp riffs, sinister bass line and thrashing drums.
The darker visual lyrics “Gagged, bound and craft in a tale, Trailing wrapped in a gasp” are a whole world away from singing about going out and getting ID’d as they did three years ago.
The first release from the album is Crying Lightening, which is the second strongest song of the lot. It eases it’s way in with its dominant bass and spine chilling guitar riffs which merge into a sexy solo 2 and a half minutes in.
Alex throws in a rhyming couplet here and there “your past-times, consisted of the strange And twisted and deranged” and the first hit from the album is there all tied up and polished ready to go.
And if the words on The Jeweller's Hands are anything to go by: “If you have a lesson to teach me, I’m listening, ready to learn’ it looks like we'll be hearing a lot more from 'em.
