Whatever People May Say...
When they arrived on the scene in 2005, they were the next big thing to happen to Britrock. With their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare, the Arctic Monkeys still hang on to that moniker: the next big thing.
By Manoj Nair, TNN |
When they arrived on the scene in 2005, they were the next big thing to happen to Britrock. With their second album Favourite Worst Nightmare, the Arctic Monkeys still hang on to that moniker: the next big thing. Like their runanway success debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, this one, post-Mercury prize, feels like another first album. The band is still in its formative days.
The extremely young Yorkshire quartet — with the infuriatingly talented lead singer Alex Turner — is back at experimentation sans the baggage of success. The songs go back to the band’s roots: straightforward ranting about life etc.
And refreshingly rearranged too. Particularly when you are languishing in the isolation of your village amidst a bevy of unwanted relatives at a family wedding, it is just comforting to hear the Monkeys wail: How to tear apart the ties that bind?/ Perhaps ‘f*@k off’ might be too kind on Do Me A Favour.
Turner retains his graciously craggy voice and proves that his songwriting gift was not a passing fancy. Brianstorm, though seemingly done in a hurry, is a poke at the modern day bloke: We can’t take our eyes off the t-shirt and ties combination/Well see you later, innovator.
The next one Teddy Picker too is an acerbic take on the smooth-talking pretenders of the world. Asuming that all things are equal/Who’d want to be men of the people/When there’s people like you? Turner asks of the faces behind the facade. He can afford to, after having broken onto the scene on his own, sidetracking A&E executives at record companies. The song also makes fun of music critics who indulge in drawing up top 10 lists, among other things.
It is in the sixth song that the album actually gains an identity different from the one preceding it. Only One Who Knows, is a song made of slow electrified strums as an antithesis to the calculated punk chaos that streamlines the entire album.
Fluorescent Adolescent, the song prior to that, is a popish dancefloor jingle in which Turner attempts to drop his teenage mindset, turning to adulthood for a while. His musings on a middle-aged woman’s sex life, however, are not as imaginative: You used to get it in your fishnets/Now you only get it in your nightdress.
This album once again reinforces the fact that the Monkeys’ sound lies somewhere between Blur and Oasis. And just when you began wondering whether Turner also comes close to Morrissey, he throws in a bit of an Ennio
Morricone sample in the signing off song of the album,505. Hints of what may come next.
This second coming with subtle variations in the same theme is hard to ignore. The Arctic Monkeys may still be the next big thing yet.
The extremely young Yorkshire quartet — with the infuriatingly talented lead singer Alex Turner — is back at experimentation sans the baggage of success. The songs go back to the band’s roots: straightforward ranting about life etc.
And refreshingly rearranged too. Particularly when you are languishing in the isolation of your village amidst a bevy of unwanted relatives at a family wedding, it is just comforting to hear the Monkeys wail: How to tear apart the ties that bind?/ Perhaps ‘f*@k off’ might be too kind on Do Me A Favour.
Turner retains his graciously craggy voice and proves that his songwriting gift was not a passing fancy. Brianstorm, though seemingly done in a hurry, is a poke at the modern day bloke: We can’t take our eyes off the t-shirt and ties combination/Well see you later, innovator.
The next one Teddy Picker too is an acerbic take on the smooth-talking pretenders of the world. Asuming that all things are equal/Who’d want to be men of the people/When there’s people like you? Turner asks of the faces behind the facade. He can afford to, after having broken onto the scene on his own, sidetracking A&E executives at record companies. The song also makes fun of music critics who indulge in drawing up top 10 lists, among other things.
It is in the sixth song that the album actually gains an identity different from the one preceding it. Only One Who Knows, is a song made of slow electrified strums as an antithesis to the calculated punk chaos that streamlines the entire album.
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Fluorescent Adolescent, the song prior to that, is a popish dancefloor jingle in which Turner attempts to drop his teenage mindset, turning to adulthood for a while. His musings on a middle-aged woman’s sex life, however, are not as imaginative: You used to get it in your fishnets/Now you only get it in your nightdress.
This album once again reinforces the fact that the Monkeys’ sound lies somewhere between Blur and Oasis. And just when you began wondering whether Turner also comes close to Morrissey, he throws in a bit of an Ennio
Morricone sample in the signing off song of the album,505. Hints of what may come next.
This second coming with subtle variations in the same theme is hard to ignore. The Arctic Monkeys may still be the next big thing yet.
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