Arctic Monkeys: Cause for Concern?

It's been pretty much non-stop excitement for Arctic Monkeys since 2005. They become one of the first bands to truly make their name on the internet. They sell out the London Astoria before they even release their debut album. Their first single, "I Bet You Look Good on The Dancefloor" goes straight in at #1 and showed that indie music in the UK was alive and kicking. Their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not become the fastest selling UK debut in history and gets a 10/10 review in the NME. Instantly, they were the biggest and best band in Britain.

Second time round, their album Favourite Worst Nightmare received almost unanimous critical acclaim, even though most people were saying it wasn't as strong as the debut (something I flagrantly disagree with, and struggle to understand in a lot of ways) Then they headline Glastonbury. On their second album.

The mood changed on their third album Humbug however. It was an even stronger departure, a lot of folks said, than Favourite Worst Nightmare. Alex Turner revealed that during the recording process they'd been listening to Hendrix and Cream, and were decmaping to the Mojave Desert to record with Josh Homme. There was a palpable change in the wind in the British music press - the NME especially. It was full of spiteful accusations of the band disappearing up their own arse. "Fans" all over the place were infuriated that the band had "betrayed" their original sound and aesthetic. I was livid at that. Anyone who had listened with any thing approaching an attention span to Favourite Worst Nightmare would have seem Humbug coming a long way of - a stunningly natural progression of the band's sound, which also saw some of Alex Turner's deftest and most eloquent lyrical turns. Matt Helders' highly publicised bromance with P Diddy may have put a few off but hey, let's keep our eyes on the prize here.

So I have utterly adored everything Arctic Monkeys have ever turned their spry little northern hands to. If you'd asked me a few weeks ago, I would have said the band had never written a bad song. They're one of those bands, as far as I'm concerned, where even the B-Sides are of unspeakably good quality.

Then... this happened:



Now, on numerous levels - by the band's own standards and as a song on it's own - that is crap. Genuinely crap. It's not the worst song ever - it's not Justin Bieber or Cliff Richard. But by the standards of one of the most adept, eloquent and able bands of my generation, chanting "I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL" over mediocre thumping just does NOT cut it.

I have no issue whatsoever with the band further maturing and adapting their sound; I've never been someone who refuses to move on from the first album. As far as I'm concerned, the band have gotten better with each album. Also, I have no problem with them being influenced by classic rock acts like Hendrix, Cream and The Doors. Sure, there's plenty of bands around who influenced by those bands and suck like a malnourished calf at it's mother's glorious teet, but there's also been an unhealthy aversion to being openly influenced by those kind of bands in modern indie music.

However - "Brick by Brick" sounds brainless and crass. It sounds like something off the new Beady Eye album. It sounds lazy. It's Matt Helders singing the verses, not Alex Turner, but when a band containing one of the generation's greatest lyricists releases a song containing a refrain of "I WANNA ROCK AND ROLL!", I'm not having it. It's not a carefree, youthful expression of energy and abandonment. It's crass, pure and simple. The chorus is catchy and a tad lush, I'll give them that, but beyond that it's formulaic and makes you think that there may be such a thing as too much Queens of the Stone Age. At the end of the day, they're still a bunch of skinny white northern lads from Sheffield, not drug addled lone rangers traipsing through the American West, re-enacting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with LSD naturally running in their blood (a lesson someone should probably taught Kasabian a couple of years back) If they delve into the kind of territory I'm worried they might, I quite simply don't think I'll be able to take them seriously.

But let's remember of course, this is just one song. A song that isn't even going to be a single. And a song that's not even led by the band's lead singer (and may bot have even been predominantly written by him). I desperately, desperately hope that it's not indicative of the overall nature of the album. I have a strong suspicion that the band are on unfathomable cart loads of drugs, which could result in a terrifying lack of quality control or a psychadelic masterpiece. I have a deep rooted faith in Arctic Monkeys, and I hope that this track is just a forgettable album track (even though, in my mind, they've never written one of those before) I've loved watching the band's progression, and even if this album is crap, I hope it won't herald the end of them, but that it will become a mediocre building block in the legacy they should end up leaving behind that makes me appreciate the other blocks all the more. Or maybe it will be awesome. Again.