Albums and Abominations

By Benjamin Huber-Rodriguez     9/16/13 7:00pm

Clubs are fast. Dancing is fast; uppers are fast; hookups are fast; sex is fast. Songs about those things are fast. You know what's slow? Mornings are slow. Relationships are slow; love is slow; depression and heartache are slow. The Arctic Monkeys made a name for themselves singing fast songs about fast stuff, but on AM, the band's fifth album, everything is slow. The same songs that were sung at breakneck pace on earlier Monkeys records now resemble dark, haunting dirges. Lead singer Alex Turner meticulously dissects every detail of his various love affairs with enough clever wordplay to make Fitzgerald blush, and that's what makes AM worth the listen. Turner's transformation of the band from a talented rock outfit to his own (im)personal soapbox, however, is largely a losing endeavor. 

There are two ways an album becomes transcendent: Either it does something completely revolutionary that changes the game forever (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band), or it does something already established impossibly well. Arctic Monkeys' 2006 debut record, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not is the latter kind. Despite becoming the fastest-selling album of all time, topping many year-end lists and being hailed as a modern masterpiece, it was nothing more than four British teenagers playing rock music. The band played tighter than orchestrated machines and Turner's witty, observational words are still the benchmark for lyrical hyperrealism. Seven years and four LPs later, however, comparisons between the  Arctic Monkeys of 2006 and 2013 are pointless; it's not the same band, and it never will be. So, with a heavy heart, we leave Whatever People Say I Am behind and dive headfirst into AM.

Opener "Do I Wanna Know?" is a microcosm of the entire album packed into one song. It has classic minor guitar hook, the ominous bass, the trudging drumbeat. Turner's wordplay and attention to detail are at their best during the verses with lines like "Have you got colour in your cheeks? / Do you ever get that fear that you can't shift the type that sticks around like something in your teeth?" The riff is pretty catchy, and the idea is familiar enough, but then the chorus hits and rather than some loud climax or tempo shift or chord change or anything, the song trudges right through with some of the dopiest lyrics Turner has displayed yet: "Do I wanna know If this feeling flows both ways? / Sad to see you go, was sorta hoping that you'd stay." Sorta hoping? Asking her if you wanna know? It is as if the entire song is an apathetic shrug.

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"R U Mine?" continues in similar fashion but is by far the stronger of the two singles thanks to creative contributions from the rest of the band. There is some nice guitar interplay between Turner and Jamie Cook, and drummer Matt Helders, the Monkeys' best musician since the beginning of their career, actually gets to play some dynamic, rolling beats into unpredictable crashes that keep the song on edge. The theme of the song is the same as the opening track, and Turner gets off a few more clever quips: "Unfair we're not somewhere misbehaving for days / Great escape lost track of time and space / She's a silver lining climbing on my desire."  

Track six, the piano-driven tongue-in-cheek ballad "No. 1 Party Anthem" is the album's slowest and best song. The spacey, underwater guitars and punch-drunk cadence paint a fantastic scene of embarrassment and inebriation at a club, waiting for the party anthem to be played. The song is a bit silly, but when Turner sings, "And she calls the folks who run this her oldest friends / Sipping a drink and laughing at imaginary jokes / As all the signals are sent, her eyes invite you to approach," you can hear the underlying truth and catharsis. It is a touching, personal moment on an otherwise vague, impersonal record.  

The album continues in this hit-or-miss fashion. The time signature of the songs rarely shifts from the standard 4/4, Bad Company-era classic rock, and messages fail to reach further than wondering about what women are thinking, wondering what you think about them, what the best way to talk to them is, whether they ar single or not. "One for the Road" is literally about pouring one more beer for the road; "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" is about, well, isn't it obvious? Occasionally, the band deviates from the formula, such as on the spacious, grandiose finale "I Wanna Be Yours," and the results are a welcome hint at potentially further developments for the Monkeys, whose style has stagnated over their last three albums.  

After I finished listening through the album for maybe the 10th time, I switched back to Whatever People Say I Am. I know I said it is best to approach new material without comparing it to previous work, but damn was that first album good. When AM hits, some of that classic Arctic Monkeys is still present: the fluid, seamless transfer of desperation, hope, fear, shyness and intoxication from Turner to the listener. When AM misses, it is because Turner's laments seem like the furthest thing from real human empathy. At least the Monkeys of 2006 will always be 19 years old, and they will always be resonant. The same cannot be said for their present-day incarnations, but comparing is pointless, right? 

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