Aug 21 2009 10:58 am,
Arctic Monkeys
‘Humbug’
(Domino)
For someone still of such tender years, Alex Turner has pretty much done the friggin’ lot. Mercury Music Prize? Check! Massive success with ‘side-project’? Check! Shagging Alexa Chung? Chick! Er, clown costumes? Honk! That’s not to mention trying his hand in numerous other writing, production and collaboration projects, including working with the likes of Dizzee Rascal. Young, good-looking, with talent – and presumably money – to burn, if it were anyone else, such a seemingly flawless person would have people cueing up to bash his big red nose in. However, humility goes a long way, and the Arctic Monkeys frontman has it in spades – and it shows. Not merely is it his demeanour, which stubbornly retains that languid down-to-earth sarcasm, but the fact that his is not an ego to rest on its laurels. It would’ve been so easy to repeat the party trick that opened the doors to the riches that has befallen Arctic Monkeys, but with third album ‘Humbug’, the evolution of their sound and scope continues on a level that would have Darwin scratching his head. The Origin Of The Monkeys, it seems, is not one that adheres to a generic thread. And that can only be a good thing, eh The Enemy? Eschewing the big stomping dancefloor-bound sound of tracks like… well, you know by now, ‘Humbug’ is a slow-burning affair that demands a lot more input from the listener. Opening with a guitar riff that recalls Gomez at their most coherent (no mean feat, that), ‘My Propeller’ confounds expectations right from the off, ushering you into an album that gently seduces rather than gang-bangs you firmly from behind. It’s a tactic that serves them well, particularly on preceding single ‘Crying Lightning’, which perfectly addresses the balance between the last Monkeys output and Turner’s little diversion. Indeed, much of this album is clearly influenced by the fruits of the frontman’s extra-curricular bluesier side pursued with The Last Shadow Puppets, particularly in the latter half of the album. Mid-album couplet ‘Fire And Thud’ and ‘Cornerstone’, in particular, are two of their most classically written songs yet – the former a Rolling Stonesesque examination of bruised soul, the latter a Beatles-bound obsession ballad. Turner’s lyrics this time round, though retaining a sharpness and wry humour – “What came first, the chicken or the dickhead?” (‘Pretty Visitors’) – are predominantly more introspective, invoking imagery and metaphor that reflects his own state of mind rather than a cultural treatise. Culminating in closing track ‘The Jeweller’s Hands’, the lucid Lewis Carroll-like imagery interweaves the folding architecture of a melody that seems to musically encapsulate everything the restless singer has been up to thus far. “If you’ve a lesson to teach me,” he drawls on the fade-out. “I’m listening, ready to learn”, demonstrating that the man that has everything – yes, even laurels – is not ready for resting just yet. With ‘Humbug’, Arctic Monkeys once again raises the bah.
Stephen Brolan