The Arctic Monkeys want to destroy your town — join them
THE CD: “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” (Domino)
PERFORMER: Arctic Monkeys
WEBSITE: Click here.
SUGGESTED TRACKS: “Fake Tales of San Francisco”, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”, “Riot Van”, “Mardy Bum”
The Arctic Monkeys continue retro Brit-pop’s recent winning streak with their debut album, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not.” They join the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Kaiser Chiefs, bands who stormed stores and stations in the last few years with tongue-in-cheek, ’80s-fueled tunes about sex, dancing and misanthropy.
The Monkeys fall on the harder side of the sound spectrum, but keep the pop structure. As many layers of rock form one mountain, they build a song on several energized riffs instead of punk power-chords. Yet they are fast, loud and really annoyed with the rest of us.
In his heavy northern England patois (brush up on your British slang), singer Alex Turner barks about bar fights, jerk bouncers, getting home and other nightlife trials of 19- and 20-year-olds (in the U.S., add two years). He’s wonderfully rude and abrupt, such as in “Dancing Shoes,” when he demands: “Get on your dancing shoes/You sexy little swine.” Even the softer songs hit like nails; the smokey-lounge traipse of “Riot Van” backs a tale of drunken teens sassing and fighting cops.
Turner can get astoundingly wordy at times, but can also create a scene with one line. In “Fake Tales of San Francisco,” a funky indictment of poseur bands, we feel the misery and see the silliness with a simple lyric: “Yeah, but his bird thinks it’s amazing, though, so all that’s left/Is the proof that love’s not only blind but deaf.”
The Monkeys can be specific to a fault. “Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured” is about trying to get a bunch of drunken people into a cab, not a particularly exciting topic (nor familiar to the car-owning youth of America). In the same vein, “The View From the Afternoon” refers to a girl finding text messages from her drunken boyfriend on her cell phone: “When she’s pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock/And there’s verse and chapter sat in her inbox.” It’s hard to see this reference as timeless.
But the Monkeys don’t claim to be poets. They are chroniclers and instigators of the rowdiness that makes youth worth while. It certainly isn’t the money.
Available at all local record stores.
–by Morgan Kelly
