ARCTIC MONKEYS / Oberhausen, May 2023
or WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY ARCTIC MONKEYS ARE, THAT’S WHAT THEY ARE NOT
It was an evening in July and it seemed like the sun was setting on everyone’s faces. It was that stuffy warmth that adds an extra layer of orange gradient to everything. But as a Juliet who was about to meet her Romeo, I didn’t care for any of that while applying my red lipstick and putting that final cherry on a cupcake - my black hipster hat. It was then that I not only made my first rather passive go on my soon-to-be-first boyfriend, but also found out who the fuck Arctic Monkeys were. It would be an overstatement to thank my teenage Romeo for this introduction as any tall guitar-playing Lithuanian bohemian was an Arctic Monkeys connoisseur back in 2012. Not to mention that it was my conscious decision to go against the stream of sideways fringe girls wearing owl necklaces and singing “Fluorescent Adolescent” while dreaming of any British young skinny lad entering our high school as a student from abroad. When the Independents (a rebellious band name for my rebellious Romeo, naturally) played “Fake Tales Of San Francisco”, I did get as equally enamored by the guitar riff and the wacky shift in the mood towards the end just as I was by the curls of the main independent guy. And that was the moment that I became a freelancer in Arctic Monkeys. B-sides? Yes, sketchy torrent website, I’ll download them all. The unofficial Straighten The Rudder full album on YouTube? I’ll blast it in my first barista job as the best café music that you probably have never heard of before. “Submarine”? Thank you for coming into my life at the time of my first break-up (yeah, me and the independent Romeo I spoke about didn’t last that long).
Since then I have followed Arctic Monkeys through all the changes in haircut that Alex has undergone. [Actually, I will stop myself from blowing smoke in your face like a cigarette smoker Fiona – of course it was Alex that I have been the most invested in. If it was any other monkey in the Last Shadow Puppets, I doubt my enthusiasm for them would have been just as grand. I am not a special snowflake who hasn’t fallen for Alex’s charms - I’m just as big of an Arabella wannabe as any of you, my dear girlfriends.] So the evolution of Arctic Monkeys I took as a natural human development that I myself had been going through. It starts with puberty where you think that polo’s go well with Adidas, followed by quarter-life crisis masked under a generous amount of hair pomade that eventually makes you realize that it actually looks better if you just shave the whole thing off. Unsurprisingly, you snap out of the whole I-want-it-all mentality, you get tired of singing party anthems till three in the morning that always end up in booty-calling the one that ‘borrowed’ your sky blue Lacoste to match with her knee socks. The full-grown maturity welcomes you with a drink in a dark lit lounge where a Serge Gainsbourg lookalike croons about a moon-based hotel and casino resort. When the drastic change of 2018 first appeared in “Four Out Of Five”, I was reluctant and quick to judge the whole performance as poor method acting, but that was until I listened to the album front to back…
Inhaler performing “Just To Keep You Satisfied”
The continuation of lounge and mid-century aesthetics in The Car comes to me as a proof that the band have made up their minds – this is what they are now and they are not going to pretend that their adolescence is still fluorescent. But the live performance seems to be their weakest link, exposing either a) their manager’s hunger for never-ending four figure sums or b) the band’s ongoing quest of solving a puzzle in how to juggle between their past and present. To say that the support of Inhaler was a sort of time travel to what Arctic Monkeys once were would make me feel worried whether my memory is not failing me. The Irish four-piece seems to be a right fit for firing up the audience with easy sing-alongs and songs that do not have a build-up because they just simply start with it. If this was still 2013 and the legendary Sheffielders were touring with their arena-album AM, Inhaler would have made perfect sense. However, it’s 2023 and the tour was announced around the release of the newest album The Car, and the stage is set around the music video of “Sculptures of Anything Goes” – which is a great mysterious song for a bit of cooling off somewhere in the middle of the set rather than for the beginning -, and…
Arctic Monkeys performing “Sculptures Of Anything Goes”
…the crowd goes wild as they play “Do I Wanna Know?”, and the audience goes even crazier as the unmistakable drum entrance of “R U Mine?” blows everyone away, and the whole arena lights up from millions of phone flashlights while singing along to “I Wanna Be Yours”. And that’s only half of what was delivered from AM album together with another generous amount coming from Favorite Worst Nightmare and Humbug. While I am willing to fight over the indifference towards the newest album – not to mention almost an absolute neglect for Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino that was represented by “Four Out Of Five” – my long-gone 18 years old has been waken up to show whether she still looks good on the dancefloor. Usually, I lack giving compliments to myself, but in this case, my moves have probably improved with the years whereas Arctic Monkeys have not only slowed down with their new repertoire (and when was it’s latest update by the way?) but also forgotten how riotous their music has once been. They managed to keep “Brianstorm” as stormy as it has always been, but playing “The View From The Afternoon” after “Teddy Picker” was not the most energy-saving choice. There’s a fine line between slowing down and becoming a drag, and the line was tapped this evening more than only once. On a bright side, now at least we can easily sing along “Fluorescent Adolescent” and understand what the song is about.
Arctic Monkeys performing “The View From The Afternoon”
It seems that Alex Turner had big ideas that the band was so excited about, but it has still been a challenge in materializing them since the drastic shift in 2018. They might be opening the evening with a tongue-in-cheek commentary on how they are now “puncturing the bubble of relatability with [their] horrible new sound”, but their new sound is still greatly drowned under the time-tested songs. Frankly, I have been wrapping my head around it all and it has made… no perfect sense. Maybe Arctic Monkeys are the Beatles of the 21st century and maybe this is their time of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. You haven’t heard of the Beatles performing “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” right after “I want To Hold Your Hand”, or have you?
