Hi Gents
Just wanted to start a thread about the arctic monkeys , cause i discovered them about 2 months ago and i think theyre an AWESOME band.
The boys invent a new and different music no one did before with those drums , different variations of notes on songs , alex turner's lyrics , which i really love , so , wanted to make this thread.
Who likes them? give your opinion.
The band was formed in 2002 while they were in high school , during the next years until 2006 they created many songs , like " A Certain Romance " , which was released on 2006 on the album "Whatever People Say I Am , Thats What Im Not"

VIDEO





Also LOVED this one - Mardy Bum

VIDEO





From The Ritz To The Rubble

VIDEO





I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

VIDEO





Leave Before The Lights Come On

VIDEO





Then , in 2007 they came with a new album - " Favourite Worst Nightmare" , which in my opinion it sounded darker than the 1st album , but its excellent for me anyway
Ill put videos of my faves from that one , which are Teddy Picker , Fluorescent Adolescent , Do Me A Favour ,and Old Yellow Bricks.

Teddy Picker
VIDEO



Fluorescent Adolescent
VIDEO



Do Me A Favour
VIDEO





So , tell me what do you think about them , i just loved them the 1st time i listened to them !!!.

More history ------http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_monkeys



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-31 20:44 by mexicostone.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the first album and listen to it all the time.

Mardy Bum is probably my favorite with Fake Tales coming in 2nd. I also like the one that goes

"One look sends it coursing through the veins - oh how the feeling races...
back up to their brains to put expressions on their stupid faces".

I have the second one, but can't claim to love it. I should give it another listen though.

Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.

That one is " You Probably Couldnt See For The Lights , But You Were Staring Straight At me"

Oh yeah. It's funny when I was younger and liked a new album I would spend so much time looking at the record and liner notes, now I don't even know the names of most of the songs I like.

I wrote about these guys about six weeks ago.[www.iorr.org]
They are great,is nice to see other Stones fans also are into some great new music,sometimes from reading most of the topics in the threads,it seems most the people here are caught in a time warp,where there is no other good music except for The Stones..

"No dope smoking no beer sold after 12 o'clock"

Not particular cup o' tea...nice that some guys still play a semblance of Rock and roll...not for me...enjoy. More silly U-2 nonsense...

JR

I LOVE the first album. Saw them live at the peak of the "Whatever People Say..." hype and they were fantastic. Didn´t they open for the Stones on the ABB tour?

Alex Turner is one of the finest lyricists of his generation.
He's in it for the long-turn.

get off the bandwagon, and put down the handbook.

Quote
CindyC
Oh yeah. It's funny when I was younger and liked a new album I would spend so much time looking at the record and liner notes, now I don't even know the names of most of the songs I like.

That's me too. Age I suppose ;^)

The best new band since a long long long long time... absolutly love them..

Also the Last Shaddow Puppets project is great with fantastic arrangements

Got a last minute ticket to see them tonight - it was a great show - I'm totally pumped!

Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.

Think they are putting out a new record this month. It's called Humbug, if I remember right.

I love their debut album.

I remember seeing the Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor video and being blown-away by this scruffy bunch of Sheffield oiks.

A Certain Romance is a masterpiece and one of the most brilliantly written and insightful pieces I have heard by anyone. Alex Turner really knew how to make you feel you were in a Sheffield High St on a boozed-up Saturday night.

Not so keen on Favorite Worst Nightmare but am looking forward to given the new release a spin.

Lets not forget Alex Turners superb side-project - The Last Shadow Puppets.

Odd one for me as I really didn't rate the first album. He sounded more like a comedian turned singer than a great vocalist.
Never heard the second album and then was absolutely knocked out by his other project The Last Shadow Puppets. Now I'm looking forward to hearing the third as it's apparently very different and they've taken a lot of risks.

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Silver Dagger
Odd one for me as I really didn't rate the first album. He sounded more like a comedian turned singer than a great vocalist.
Never heard the second album and then was absolutely knocked out by his other project The Last Shadow Puppets. Now I'm looking forward to hearing the third as it's apparently very different and they've taken a lot of risks.

produced by Josh Homme of QOTSA, no less

i used to love them, but how he sings just reminds of... George Formby

saw them live when they toured the second album and was REALLY bored and disappointed. No stage presence. Sounded like i was listening to the CD but at a greater volume.

Quote
CindyC
Oh yeah. It's funny when I was younger and liked a new album I would spend so much time looking at the record and liner notes, now I don't even know the names of most of the songs I like.

same with me. we start having other things to do when we grow up!

Love them. They're one of the really great bands from the 00's. Way better then the Kaiser Chiefs cum suis.

The first album is superb!

The Shadow Puppets storming rush of the Spector/Nitzsche styled song
Age Of The Understatement deserved repeated plays...plays...plays and
the cover of Billy Fury's - Wonderous Place was hip but the rest just paled in their shadows .....



ROCKMAN

Found this review (and a sample) yesterday - sounds very promising. I enjoy the Arctic Monkeys, but as you'll guess, I wasn't Googling for this...

[www.clashmusic.com]

The Californian desert has a lot to answer for. In the late Sixties, Keith Richards would take Gram Parsons and their gang out to the arid landscape around the Joshua Tree, ingest copious amounts of hallucinogenics, and watch UFOs hover across the ethereal sky.

Almost forty years later, Josh Homme, Queens Of The Stone Age’s domineering main man, lured the Arctic Monkeys out to the enchanted wilderness to channel some of its psychedelic magic into their eagerly awaited third album, ‘Humbug’. All swirling carnival organs and colourful decorations, ‘Humbug’ is as vivid as the desert sun, and sees the band stretching out beyond previously tread territories into a bigger, more strident sound.

- - -

As Clash catches up with Alex Turner and Matt Helders from the band, one sunny day in North London, we discover how the roots of ‘Humbug’ lie in the vibrant experimentalism of the Sixties’ leading power trios...

“We needed to have a shake up and be out the comfort zone,” says Alex in response to the band’s decision to up and record in the States. They had asked Homme to co-produce with long-time producer (and S.M.D. man) James Ford, and when he accepted he naturally invited the band to his Rancho De La Luna studio and into its unique method of working.

“The [studio] that we were in is just somebody’s house,” says Helders. “Dave Catching from Eagles Of Death Metal, it’s his house. He lived in it while we were recording there; he were sleeping there every night. It were a strange way of doing it but it worked.” With little to no distractions amid their surroundings, it was the perfect setting to work on the seeds of ideas they’d sown before arriving.

“Before we went there we had some demos and we’d done some songs, but there was no design for the record,” Alex reveals. “We’d talked about some things before and deviated from original plans and stuff; there was no hard and fast thing like, ‘This is what we’re gonna do’. But when we got back from that first session it did seem that that experience [with Josh] or the songs we’d recorded during that time provided the design for the rest of it, or the framework.”

That design is evident in the album’s big-sky sound, an advancement, it must be pointed out, from Turner’s widescreen foray with The Last Shadow Puppets. The band sound incredibly refined. Matt Helders, once a relentless beast unleashed on a drum kit, here sounds restrained, only really letting loose when the song needs to, but otherwise keeping things on a suitably meaty foundation.

“It’s harder to hold back because it’s tempting to do fills everywhere and try to come up with a beat that no one’s ever done or can’t make any sense of, but then it’s not really that good then,” Matt admits. His thuds and rolls are married indelibly to his bass counterpart, Nick O’Malley, who acquires fuzz tones and rigid riffs that mirror the bounding rhythms, and while there are still a few bass/guitar duet hooks in there, this album’s absence of spiky, chunky, punky guitars is noticeable. From Jamie Cook (and probably Alex too) we get trebly chimes, we get ethereal timbres, we get meandering solos that almost slide out of tune, and we get soft, melodic acoustic guitars that carry light electric picking.

“Yeah, it’s more of a guitar record than we’ve done before,” Alex concurs. “[Josh] encouraged us with playing solos and stuff - guitar solos are summat we’ve kinda rarely delved into, we were always a bit scared of it or summat - but him and the engineer, this guy Alain Johannes, were both like @#$%&’ amazing - Alain’s like the best guitar player I’ve ever seen, and they were very encouraging in that department. There’d be times where you’d be playing summat and you’re @#$%&’ it up so they’d send you outside - because there’s nowhere else to go - to go and clear your head and you’d just be like playing among the cacti.”

Arctic Monkeys - 'Crying Lightning'






A major difference that sets ‘Humbug’ apart from its predecessors is the development of Alex Turner’s voice. It’s apparent in the very first moments of opener ‘My Propellor’ - he is almost crooning into the microphone; a smooth, breathy and loose singing voice. It’s immediately interesting: you want to hear that breakneck spoken-word rap we love him for, but his laconic tones throughout are, again, more redolent of his Puppets contributions. “I’ve just sort of tapped into that a little bit more,” he says meekly. “Yeah, there was definitely a desire to wanna go down that avenue.”

The expansive desert sessions were countered by Ford’s recordings with the Monkeys in Brooklyn. There were concerns, says Alex, of the bi-coastal studios producing disparate sounds, but once the vibe was set with Josh, the mood continued and effortlessly permeated Ford’s work, meaning there’s no perceptible difference between the sessions.

Of course, the album almost never happened at all - as reported on ClashMusic.com, Alex had his prized lyrics book stolen, jeopardising all plans and sketches for proposed songs. Despite his prolificness, losing a bounty of irreplaceable prose couldn’t help but devastate Alex. All he could do was try and remember favourite lines and attempt to recreate lost songs. “I think you keep your strongest verse in your mind,” he considers. “I went and got another notebook, sorta frantically trying to remember stuff, and perhaps I came to better ends anyway.”

Under Homme’s tutelage, the Monkeys started recording in a fresh and open environment where, as Alex explains, there was no forethought on how any sonic complexities might prove problematic down the line. “Beforehand, when we were recording, we limited us selves,” he starts, “we wanted to be able to record this tune on Monday and be able to play it in a bar or whatever on Tuesday, you know what I mean? Whereas this time we weren’t really bothered about that, we just thought we’d figure out how to do it live later. We’ll just open it up a bit more. Everything about it was a lot less guarded and we just experimented more.”

That vast vision was encouraged by Josh, who supplied the band with albums by people he thought would inspire further explorations in sound. Roky Erikson was one such influence - his band, the 13th Floor Elevators, were short-lived pioneers of the West Coast garage and psychedelic scene, and are also a favourite of Primal Scream, who covered their ‘Slip Inside This House’ on the seminal ‘Screamadelica’ album. However, the Monkeys’ listening habits were dominated by a more celebrated lysergic warrior.

“Hendrix is a big thing we listened to loads during this,” Alex announces. “We got into Hendrix as you do when you first pick up a guitar cos you’re like, ‘Wow, look what he can do with this thing that’s hurting me fingers’. But we got back into that and perhaps appreciated it more and got more into the records than we had before. ‘Electric Ladyland’ and ‘Axis: Bold As Love’ and that... And we were listening to Cream a little bit - there’s some good harmonies and stuff on there, it’s cool.”

‘Humbug’ is being released the week before the group are set to headline the Reading/Leeds Festival, which means you’ve only got seven days to learn the choruses to your favourite new songs. Also on the bill are Eagles Of Death Metal, Josh Homme’s other dirty outfit, and the chance of a guest appearance during the Monkeys’ set is not dismissed by the duo.

After Reading, they’ll be heading back to the States, but this time for another tour. Their success there, says Matt, is hard to gauge. “It’s been a while now since we’ve done anything there. It’s always been good - well, good enough - without ever having to go out of our way to make it better. Like, we’ve been able to go for a few weeks and not like spend half a year there just to sell a few more and play some good gigs.” Then, when asked if the Californian-born ‘Humbug’ might fare well with its motherland’s natives, Matt just shrugs and adds, “It’s hard to say, isn’t it, cos I don’t know what they want.”

Well, I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.

- - -

‘Humbug’ is released on 24th August on Domino Records. Arctic Monkeys will be headlining the Leeds and Reading Festivals on 28th/29th August respectively. You can read the full Clash review of ‘Humbug’

I like the first song(A Certain Romance). Better than some of the troglodytes on tour right now(i.e. the 'boss', Macca, Neil Young).

Libertines clones without the dope but pretty and young

I fell for all the hype and bought the first album of theirs, though I'll have to admit that it took a lot of plays to get used to.

...I like the Powergoats, too.

Back in 2005 A friend of mine downloaded some of their songs, 12 if I remember well.
They were very good indeed and a refreshing change to what was available at that time , briliant lyrics , great musicianship and all delivered in a local accent ,they are from Sheffield I think, a refreshing change from the homognised Anglo American way of singing and indeed a lot of their themes were very local to their home town, as mentioned by CindyC ealier, Mardi bum is a classic piece of life's everyday emotional dramas so cleverly put into song.
These downloads were a well played cdr ,I even took them on holiday to Florida in June 05.
Then in Jan 06 the first single to get an official release came out I forget which song it was now, and to my great dissapointment it had lost some of its edge, somehow more polished and slick, then came the first album and more tinkering with the songs , some lyric changes and some different arrangements, I think I have played the official album maybe 5 times at most, as to the almost daily plays of the original downloads.

The second album is not as good as the first and has been played twice, I read a preview of the next album and it is meant to be a bit heavier both musically and lyrically, not heard any of it yet, but whatever it sounds like it won't have that spontainiety and raw emotion of those early downloads.
They were incedently released by the band themselves and not ripped off in any way, they might even be still available, if they are check them out, they are well worth looking for.

Did see them on a gig last year.

Not bad but for me it was kinda boring,
nothing special or unique - I think they are one of the better hype bands at present, but not really special...

What does everyone think of Humbug?

IMO, it's good, but they're going to loose more fans, than they’ll gain.

humbug's good - not brilliant.
The Josh Homme influence is prevelant, it's all Joshua Tree and desert, and not alot of Sheffield dirt, grime and fish and chips...which is a shame, imo.

I agree Adrian.

I like Humbug too, but everything which I love about the debut - the Englishness - is missing. Its all Americana and imo, they'll loose more fans then they'll gain.

well it's probably going to get worse, last I heard Alex might be moving to NYC to live with his girlfriend, but that was a few months ago, not sure if he did.

Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.