Arctic Monkeys
I’m not really too bothered about who he’s fucking, or where he lives, or even what he gets up to outside music. He can become an actor if he wants, start painting….. whatever. I’m concerned about Alex Turner, ‘the indie icon’, about this ‘genius’ tag that has prematurely been bestowed upon his slender frame. … Continue Reading
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
While it was only a few short years ago, 2006 was a real game changer in terms of this decade. The previous year saw the implementation of digital sales into the singles chart and by summer this year Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ became the first UK number one not to sell a single physical copy. It was the also the year that YouTube went supernova and allowed many of us to check out classic clips of bands performing on Top of The Pops while we mourned the final weekly episodes. While the great rush to add people to your fledging MySpace account may have been slightly earlier, there are two acts that will forever be associated with it; Lily Allen and The Arctic Monkeys. … Continue Reading
While we’ve given you plenty of editorial on our albums of the year (50-41, 40-31,30-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-7. 6-4 3-1), we’re keeping it simple with this list of what releases our gaggle of writers collectively voted their singles of 2009. How did we reach this list, I hear you cry? May I hand over to our trusty friend, Excel Guru, who was last seen pre-ambling our top 50 albums end-of-year thingamejig:
“Everyone sent in a top 10 list and the 50 singles with the most nominations were collected; tie-breaks were decided by how high up those lists the songs were. Then everyone chose 10 ordered singles from the list of 50 and they were ranked using the same criteria as the album poll.”
Artists have been bitching a lot recently about pirates, about pick pockets, about file sharers and essentially pointing the big guilty finger at everybody other then themselves when it comes to the sudden appearance of their work on the internet.
Now I’m going to put this out there in spite of knowing that the door already has been blown wide open to the musical safe, meaning that everything – pretty much every song and album from rare Garth Brooks B-sides to the entire back catalogue of Sparks is there for the taking. But a great deal of artists from the pre-file sharing age have been helpless when it comes to their music being illegally downloaded, however there are those who have been releasing their singles and albums since the advent of file sharing just haven’t been careful enough, it is those artists that we must question, are they truly valuing their music? … Continue Reading
Leeds Festival
By now, presumably, the hazy memories of Leeds and Reading will have begun to return for the thousands of revellers who attended the twin festivals over the weekend and, on site, the portaloos will merely be smouldering rather than blazing. For those that want more flag-free music-in-a-field experiences, or for those who watched it on the TV and experienced pangs of envy, a limited number of tickets have been made available for 2010 at this year’s prices.
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys haven’t played a gig in the UK for two years, but that’s about to change as they’ve announced a competition winners-only show in London.
Arctic Monkeys - Humbug
At a stage in their career where a even a bad album would undoubtedly still be commercially well received, Arctic Monkeys go for broke and serve up a much darker, more menacing follow up to 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare.
After spending time holed up in the Joshua Tree studio in the Mojave desert, working with co-producers Josh Homme (Queens Of The Stone Age) and Simian Mobile Disco’s James Ford – who drummed and produced for Alex Turner’s side project The Last Shadow Puppets – the band return for a punt at a new direction, with older influences (The Doors, Cream, Jimi Hendrix) and Homme the combined driving force behind this almost psychedelic venture into vintage revivalism.
Opener ‘My Propeller’ isn’t the best of starts – innuendo-laden lyrics such as “My propeller won’t spin / And I can’t get it started on my own” are fun, yet clearly not a display of Turner’s best work. His usual eloquence doesn’t always show, namely in ‘Fire And The Thud’, a song that probably should have been relegated to a b-side, and ‘Pretty Visitors’, with its snarled yet curiously bizarre line “what came first/the chicken or the dickhead?”. To claim that the lyrics totally pale in comparison to past work is an injustice, and for every bad line there are several clever lines to counter it – on ‘Dangerous Animals’, Turner belts out a dyslexia-friendly chorus - “I’m pinned down by the dark/A-N-I-M-A-L/Makes my head pirouette/More than I would be willing to confess/D-A-N-G-E-R-O-U-S”. … Continue Reading
Arctic Monkeys
Arctic Monkeys have announced that they will preview tracks from their forthcoming third album Humbug online. They will showcase new songs through a web transmission streamed from their official site this Thursday (30th July) at 9pm BST.
Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning
2007 should have belonged to Arctic Monkeys. More festival headlining slots than you could shake a stick at coupled with a superb follow-up to their record-breaking debut album meant the year was there for the taking.
But dodgy sound at Glastonbury robbed them off their crowning moment, and the weather spoiled their giant near-homecoming gigs at Lancashire County Cricket Club.
So ‘Crying Lightning’, the first peek at their new album Humbug, represents something of a crossroads for the Sheffield band.
Sessions with Josh Homme in the Mojave Desert led to speculation that the Monkeys were about to go Seriously Rock. But ‘Crying Lightning’ seems to be very much a bridge from Favourite Worst Nightmare to their new era. … Continue Reading
Arctic Monkeys - Crying Lightning
The first release from Arctic Monkeys‘ upcoming third LP Humbug will be ‘Crying Lightning’, it has been announced. The track will receive its first airing on July 6 on Zane Lowe’s radio show, and will become available for download via iTunes from midnight that night. The physical single will be release on August 17, a week before the release of the album.
Humbug, produced by Josh Homme in the Mojave Desert and James Ford in Brooklyn, is set to be a broader-spanning affair that Whatever I Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and Favourite Worst Nightmare.
The Sheffield four-piece will be headlining Reading/Leeds Festival in August and also hitting a variety of destinations across Europe and over the Atlantic.
July 2 Opener Festival, Gydnia, Poland
July 4 Rock For People, Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic … Continue Reading
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