Arctic Monkeys - A.M.

I think I got A.M. for Christmas one year. The Rick Rubin-riff rock scene had not yet been minted “Toyotathon music”, and it was a band that I had heard friends talk about in terms of excitement and endearment, as one of the shrinking number of 00s rock bands on the radio that weren’t “radio rock” or a glorified pop act. To be honest, I confused them with Snow Patrol well into high school (which we will get to on this blog sooner than later). Where those Northern Irish lads went heart-eyed and soft-focus with their major label jump, Arctic Monkeys were able to stubbornly hold onto the title of “indie rock” by staying on Domino their entire career (never mind the fact that this record was distributed and marketed by Warner Brothers in the US). There’s more influence from the Beatles than from the Smiths or Dinosaur Jr to my ear, but also plenty of hip hop and funk too.

The singles off A.M. are the big source of comparisons to hip hop. Loop-based production is all over this album, and “Do I Wanna Know” is one of the best rock-loop songs I’ve ever heard. It has an almost-offensively simple riff that evolves just enough to create different sections as the song goes on, layers that can be pared back or piled on depending on the intensity of Alex Turner’s wailing. “R U Mine” more successfully integrates the “different-members-of-the-band-each-take-a-quick-solo-in-succession” than any Polyphia track could dream of, and is a lot of fun to rock along to. “Why’d You Only When You’re High” sounds the most obviously west-coast hip hop in its instrumentation.

Part of the issue, which is part of the genius, of these three songs is that they all sound like extensions of each other. Minor pentatonic riffs starting on the open bottom string at the same leisurely four-on-the-floor tempo. It almost sounds like “R U Mine” was dropped down a half step and bumped up 10 bpm just because it sounded too much like the other two. The album does cover a lot more ground on the rest of the record, and I appreciate how much it swings for the fences every at-bat.

There are so many gestures here back to 60s garage and psychedelic bands and their 00s imitators. The bluesier songs sound like better-orchestrated Black Keys, and there’s more than a little Queen and Bowie on the B-side of the album. “Mad Sounds” is a straight-up hi-fi Velvet Underground track with the vagrant soul snuffed out. I guess that’s where my issue with the album is: it has better performances and fidelity than its’ influences, but it’s missing the weirdness. “I Wanna Be Yours” is delightfully wacky, but the words come from a poem written by someone else. The lyrics Turner did write are by turn lonely, self-absorbed, striking, and really easy to sing along to. But conventionally so.

This is an in-your-face, pumping album, despite its walking-speed tempos. The mix is very compressed and intense, particularly forcing the drums forward and the guitars backwards. Lots of lush vocal layers, shimmering reverb. I don’t know why this album doesn’t work on me. It came out at the time that my brain was formulating my music taste in high school. It should have been a color in the palette I’d be trying to match for the rest of my life, but it just never was for some reason. For people my age and older it’s a treasured memory and a guiding star for what rock-derived music can be. Maybe this is a rock record, maybe it is a pop record, but it’s certainly not “indie rock”. That’s not a judgement against it necessarily.

Arctic Monkeys understand what rock is, but they would rather play with it than play it, and they write some really good tunes by using glam rock ingredients in a modern loop-pop formula. The atmosphere is immersive and well-maintained over its runtime. I know it’s good, but I just exist orthogonally to it.

A.M. by Arctic Monkeys is a good album, but I don’t like it.