- Label
- Domino
- Release date
- 24th August 2009
- Genre
- Rock
- Buy this album
- Order CD
UK indie’s great white hopes grow up without growing old
After Favourite Worst Nightmare reflected fairly balefully on their fast tracking to fame, Humbug is a pivotal album for the Arctic Monkeys. It’s good to report, then, that the Sheffield band have progressed without sacrificing their idiosyncratic, trademark charm.
Now resident in New York, Alex Turner has deepened the Monkeys’ sonic palette by turning to Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme as producer. It shows: their itchy, scratchy guitar shapes are now largely subsumed beneath QOTSA-style heavy-duty riffola and moody atmospherics.
Yet while Humbug may be more serious, it’s no less fun. Turner remains a magnificently wry wordsmith, whether hymning his own genitalia on My Propellor, affecting a Morrisey-esque alienation on Dangerous Animals or cutting to the chase on the beautifully acerbic Pretty Visitors: “Which came first, the chicken or the dickhead?”
There is nothing here as immediate as I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor but it’s an album of brooding slow-growers and intelligent, immaculate rock songs: The sound of a band growing into themselves.
More to try:
The Smiths: The Smiths
The Wedding Present: Brassneck
The Cribs: Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever
