Arctic Monkeys
Humbug

Arctic Monkeys are far darker beasts these days. Where once they sung of fake tales of San Francisco from sticky Sheffield night clubs, now they are producing brooding psychedelic soundscapes on the Lower East Side. This should come as no great surprise: always touted (to their chagrin) as the first band of the MySpace generation, they started out by tearing apart the rulebook and there is no reason for returning to piece it back together.

Humbug is the band’s long awaited third studio album, following the stratospherically successful breakthrough Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, and 2007′s warmly if not adoringly received Favourite Worst Nightmare. Their musical ark is directed firmly towards much more noise, producing something sonically different, and a progressively more complex song structure. A central criticism of Favourite Worst Nightmare was not that the heavy and drastically different sound didn’t work. Rather, they knew where they wanted to be but perhaps because of a lack of confidence and experience or even the sheer weight of expectation, they didn’t quite achieve. Humbug, on the other hand, unites ambition with delivery.

The first single to emerge from the album, ‘Crying Lightning’, suggests Alex Turner has been listening to Nick Cave and experiencing waves of nostalgia at the fall of the Woolworths pic’n’mix counter. While the focus these days may be on overall audio output, Turner’s lyrics, though opaque and inscrutable in places, still flicker with a wry self-observing spark, as in: ‘You never looked like yourself from the side/but your profile could not hide/the fact that you knew I was approaching your throne.’

From behind the production desk, Josh Homme has left an indelible mark all over the album. ‘My Propeller’, ‘Crying Lightning’ and b-side to the upcoming single ‘Dangerous Animals’ crackle with a deep and intense bass distortion that drives the songs in the style so beloved by Homme’s desert rock kings Queens of the Stone Age. Matt Helder’s drumming ticks below throughout with a methodical tribal quality. There are slower and more thoughtful numbers in the shape of ‘Secret Door’ and ‘Cornerstone’ but these are definitely the exceptions rather than the rule.

There is little in the way of counter-argument to the assertion that Arctic Monkeys now rank well above your everyday indie band, and it will be interesting to see how tracks from the new album are perceived on either side of the pond. Their original breakthrough in the States was based on the weight of enthusiasm in the UK, and dry observations of an adolescence in Sheffield carried little impact there. Humbug, with Homme on production, has a harder persona, little in the way of idiosyncratic British lyrical content, and is more obviously geared to the American listener. This is backed up by the fact that the Monkey’s Brixton Academy and Leeds/Reading appearances are their only UK dates for the last two years, with only upcoming shows in the US announced. That aside, Humbug is an undoubtedly brilliant record, regardless of which side of the tomato/tomato argument you find yourself on.

Humbug is out now via Domino

By David Ellis