Music > Album Reviews

Arctic Monkeys // AM

04/09/13

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.

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.