Monkeys Evolve In Mojave Desert

I first heard the Arctic Monkeys about three years ago in the suspiciously unfurnished downtown apartment of a professional dominatrix, a pit stop on the way to some über-cool underground art show / hipster convention my drug & real estate dealing neighbors were taking me to.

She was probably attractive, but for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you her name, or what color her hair was. I forget what artists were at the show, who the DJs were, what they played, or whether it was two buck chuck or PBR being sold at the makeshift bar. Everything that happened that night, as crazy as it all surely was, was ultimately forgettable… Except for forty minutes beginning the moment whatserface put that Arctic Monkeys album on.

When I got home and looked them up, I found a good bit of hype beginning to brew, and as I fell in love with the album, so did trendyville. The band started popping up on the cover of magazines, and they quickly became very huge. For a few months.

Now this is just how I personally remember it- Maybe the superfans will correct me on this one, but the hype died down in my corner of the world; the Arctic Monkeys moved aside for Lily Allen and TV On The Radio and the like. I don’t remember quite as many people freaking out when the Monkeys’ second album dropped the following year. But it impressed me even more. The energy was cranked up to eleven, but even objectively it was a better album, from a more mature band that was clearly evolving. My favorite Arctic Monkeys song to date was one of the subtler, more mellow tracks to be found on that album; Do Me A Favour. I will never tire of that song.

So we’ve been anticipating the Arctic Monkeys’ third album, Humbug, for awhile now; even before the news broke that Joshua Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age would be co-producing it. It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of J.Ho, but we were already confident that the Arctic Monkeys would be taking at least one more step forward as they developed into one of this generation’s finest acts.

Last month, Homme described how the album had shaped up in an interview with GQ, saying that “this is the record where they get weird, grow up and trip out.” Homme’s Mojave Desert studio has always sounded like the perfect place for that kind of thing, and it’s easy to see him as a sort of peyote slinging Maharishi.

Johnny and I had a bit of debate about this as we drove around listening to the album last week. I didn’t want to give Homme too much credit, partially out of a need to compensate our fanboyism, but mostly because I knew that the Arctic Monkeys are perfectly capable of producing a masterpiece by themselves. But at the same time, Homme’s presence is very apparent on Humbug; his unmistakable voice is heard in the background of several tracks, such as Potion Approaching and Fire And The Thud, contributing “zombie” vocals, as frontman Alex Turner called them.

Humbug is quite different from the band’s previous full length albums, though not all of the differences are unprecedented; there are some 60s pop throwback moments on a few tracks such as Cornerstone, yet the band dabbled with that on the Leave Before The Lights Come On EP. And the Fluorescent Adolescent B-sides could fit right into the new album’s tracklist, with The Bakery being a dreamy retro cut, and Plastic Tramp laying down a prototypical version of the halloween vibe that saturates Humbug. If you covet the band’s EPs and maxi-singles like I do, you’re not likely to be let down by this new album.

With that said, Humbug is a grower, and not easily digestible on a single listen. The songs are rarely very straightforward, and there’s never any rush to get to the chorus. In the opening track, My Propeller, the big rock n’ roll payoff doesn’t come until two thirds of the way through the song, after a slow, steady build. The second track, lead single Crying Lightning, is not much different, with the big break coming around the halfway mark. But that’s part of the album’s charm. The climaxes are augmented by thorough foreplay, and along with the band’s natural growth as musicians, the approach helps to establish a certain sly classiness palpable throughout Humbug’s too few thirty nine minutes.

Fortunately, there’s not a single dud out of ten tracks, which is a hell of a lot more than can be said for most albums these days. Ultimately, Homme hit the bullseye in his assessment; the band has grown up a bit, but at the same time, they got a little weird with this one. Some fans of the band’s more raucous house party fodder may be disappointed to not find more of the same. But if you ask us, it’s comforting to know that while the band’s approach may change from album to album, their growth as musicians and songwriters continues, and we continue to be impressed.