Friday, 4 October 2013

Review of "AM" by the Arctic Monkeys


At first, I thought this album was dull as dishwater. Now, I’m kind of on the fence with it.

The Arctic Monkeys' debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, was a blissfully unrefined, primal guitar banger that took an angst-ridden, realistic perspective on the club scene. It was gritty music to fuel a bar fight. AM, contrastingly, is music to fuel a hangover. It’s not music to groove and party to. It’s lazy background music with tight plodding palm-muted riffs. Some of the tracks like, No.1 Party Anthem, do nothing for me, carrying all the mind-numbing properties of general aesthetic. However, there are other tracks that have for some inexplicable reason burrowed deep into my brain e.g. Why D’you Only Call Me When You’re High.

Writing unromantic, brutally honest lyrics is the band’s masterful speciality and I think that is where this album's strength lies. For me, it fails instrumentally on many tracks. Enough palm-muting already. 


TRACK TASTER: