It was with some trepidation that I first listened to this record. Arctic Monkeys last LP “Humbug” hadn’t exactly floated my boat. In fact it had taken my boat & torpedoed it, left it on the seabed for 50 years, brought it to the surface, done a poo on it & then set the poo covered wreckage on fire. Bar “Cornerstone” & the opener “My Propeller” it was fat with stodgy, overblown & overdubbed guitars, in much the same way that Oasis’ 3rd “Be Here Now” was. I blame Josh Homme. For the Arctic Monkeys guitar OD not Oasis’. For theirs I blame druks.
The first 2 songs released to the public didn’t exactly fill me with confidence on the 1st listening either. “Brick By Brick” sounded like another Homme-age (yes?) & a b-side at best & “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” took a long while to get under my skin with its “Sparky’s Dream” aping opening.
However, “She’s Thunderstorms” was quite a pleasant surprise. & then so was “Black Treacle”. Even “Brick By Brick” sounded alright now. Hoorah the Ice Monkeys of the past are back! This is largely due to the LP being recorded as live as possible in the same way that “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” was. By the time I got to “Hellcat Spangled Shalalala” (which will be the next single) I was almost punching the air.
It couldn’t last.
After “Don’t Sit Down…” comes the triple whammy of “Library Pictures”, “All My Own Stunts” & “Reckless Serenade” all of which could’ve come from the 2nd half of “Favourite Worst Nightmare”. That’s not meant as a compliment. All feature the amassed guitars & thunderous drums that that album heralded in & that went on to dominate the next one.
“Piledriver Waltz” while good, really misses the lightness of touch that the version on Alex Turner’s soundtrack to “Submarine” had & while Jamie Cook’s guitar work has come in for a lot of praise from some other reviewers I found it to use the same tremolo/underwater sound for a whole sequence of songs including the aforementioned that made them all sound too similar.
The LP does end on a high note though with “Love Is A Laserquest”, “Suck It & See” & “That’s Where You’re Wrong” again mining the same feeling of space within the music that the record opened with.
My comparison with Oasis I think was closer to the mark than I first thought. Arctic Monkeys appear to be a group who will never surpass their first LP & will be at the mercy of their fans who will want them to be the people they were then forever.
Arctic Monkeys, Suck It And See review: 3.5/5
By Simon Stone
