Arctic Monkeys at Artpark Company

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2. Arctic Monkeys

The band's initials, a new morning, an analogue radio frequency and an existential statement - the title of Arctic Monkeys' fifth album AM suggests all of those things and more. And the record itself lives up to this pithily resonant billing by being, in drummer Matt Helders' typically forthright estimation, "the album we've always been waiting to make".
It starts with a sumptuously squelchy synthetic-sounding beat. This turns out to have been built out of all too human body parts, as all four Arctic Monkeys got together to contribute foot-stamps and knee-slaps - "which might make people think of Lederhosen," admits frontman Alex Turner, "but really it's the antithesis of that... and there was no bunting either."
So AM's opening moments eschew the queasy camaraderie of the ersatz hoedown in favour of a tautly compressed human pulse? "We wanted to come up with a different sort of clap", Turner explains, "and the way Tchad Blake mixed it makes it sound like someone banging their head against a sci-fi force-field".
"I like the way it feels dead wooden", chimes in Matt Helders, in the unabashedly earth-bound spirit of drummers from time immemorial. And this exuberant collective attention to aural detail carries through each of AM's 12 songs. Whether it's the En Vogue-worthy backing vocals of "One For The Road", the crunching Black Sabbath drum-lurch of "Arabella" or the maudlin pedal-steel of "No 1 Party Anthem", ear-catching particulars never stand out for their own sake but constantly add to the greater glory of the whole.
And since meticulous sonics are no use without tunes, AM has those in clubs. From the lilting space age come-on of "Do I Wanna Know?" to the heady swoon of "Mad Sounds" to "Snap Out Of It"'s blatantly irresistible chorus, this is an album to sing along with even as you're wondering if the lyrics can really be as good as they sound, before finding out on next hearing that they're actually even better than your first thought.