Arctic Monkeys // AM
They’re not just four guys playing music anymore, they are Rock Stars.
In many respects the Arctic Monkeys you hear on this album are a new band; although the line-up remains the same, there’s a new sexiness, a new charisma surrounding the group. They’re not just four guys playing music anymore, they are Rock Stars. So with this being a ‘new’ band, this is, in a way their debut album, hence the sort of self-titling of AM.
This album has the gift of sounding exactly like an Arctic Monkeys record whilst being nothing like their previous four. It’s completely jam-packed full of swagger, but rather than it being a Liam Gallagher – “I’m gonna smash yer in tha fookin mouth maate” bowlegged meander, it’s a Johnny Bravo – “Woah Mamma” strut.
The totalitarian nightclub bouncers of ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’ are a distant memory, replaced by sunsets behind sultry women in the passenger seat of a Ford Cortina. In the moments where AM isn’t a glam-stomping groover, the delicateness of the softer songs are enough to warm the heart, before the coldness of the steel-toed leather boot kicks back in.
If anything, AM is the soundtrack to the finale of a coming of age tale of four lads from Sheffield, once thrashing out Indie anthems, now risen through to stardom and winding up in Los Angeles, where the sun always shines.
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