Band’s return is short on nostalgia, but just what indie rock needs
Arctic Monkeys understand the power of reinvention. Just compare their last two records: 2013’s wildly successful AM married sleazy guitar riffs and subtle R’N’B inflections to frontman Alex Turner’s sardonic vignettes of everyday life, while last month’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino dispensed with the big choruses and imagined a louche, washed-up torch singer performing in a piano bar on the moon.
Stylistically, the two albums couldn’t be more different. Sure, the exquisite bon mots were still there, but who’d have thought this oncescrappy band from Sheffield would release an absurdist concept record immersed in science fiction and pieced together using harpsichords, vintage keyboards and futuristic synths?
Of course, not everyone’s happy with Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, which was written on a piano that Turner received for this 30th birthday. Lyrical, meditative, and bold to the point of hubris, it’s also undoubtedly difficult to get a purchase on, lacking in obvious hooks throughout. Nor does it exactly lend itself to mass singalongs. So what does this mean for the live shows? How could the new songs possibly work alongside, say, the pugnacious indie rock of their debut album, 2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not?
Fans need not worry. Headlining Barcelona’s sun-soaked Primavera Sound festival on Saturday night, the quartet delivered a 20-track set that was surprisingly cohesive, weaving together their disparate material into one pleasing whole. Guitars snaked and rasped; drums thundered; and Turner’s voice glided seamlessly between falsetto and a baritone croon that recalled fellow Yorkshireman Jarvis Cocker.
Goateed and wearing a Seventiesstyle white military suit and sunglasses, the 32-year-old was full of shamanic energy, all wiggling hips and hammed-up theatrics. Gone is the shy schoolboy disposition that was once typical of his performances.
Arriving on stage at just before midnight, the band – who will play the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday – opened with their Beatles-like latest single Four Out of Five, in which Turner sings about the gentrification of the moon. From there they briefly wound back the clock: 2007’s surging Brianstorm was followed by debut single I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor, both of which sent a heaving crowd into a state of bedlam.
Yet this was to be no nostalgia trip. By mainly mining their last two albums, the Monkeys clearly weren’t afraid of alienating the long-time fans weaned on the prickly punk and sentimental songwriting that was once their signature. Hits Mardy Bum and A Certain Romance were brazenly eschewed in favour of more somnambulant tracks such as One Point Perspective, with its hammering keys, and Favourite Worst Nightmare’s Do Me a Favour.
This slight lull – if you can call it that – didn’t last long, though. A blistering one-two-three of Pretty Visitors, Crying Lightning and Do I Wanna Know? felt like a triple-espresso, before the band re-emerged for an encore that included The View from the Afternoon, a brisk parable about the pitfalls of mixing alcohol with texting. With indie rock at a low ebb at the moment, Arctic Monkeys’s return couldn’t be more timely.