I had no idea these Arctic Monkeys were so big!! Not only they sold out the Wiltern three days in a row here in Los Angeles, but I had really seen a crowd that enthusiastic. The line outside the theater when I arrived was extremely long, and seen the amount of trash left by people, some of them had been probably be waiting for a long time, since mid-afternoon? I couldn’t afford to waste one more of my half-day for another concert, plus they aren’t the Rolling Stones, right? Still the outburst of energy when they came on stage was impressive and the cheering was that of the good old days of rock’ n’ roll. With 5 albums under their belt and a recent one simply called ‘AM’, done with the help of QOTSA Josh Homme (who had already produced their 2009 ‘Humbug’), have they become a power we have to count on? I had never paid too much attention to them, I sort of knew many songs (not really the lyrics) but I certainly can’t say it was one of these concerts I attended expecting recognizing the songs by their titles or anticipating the greatest hits!
Fortunately, a few kids engaged themselves in a violent jump/fight at the end of the show, and I was able to take a picture of the setlist, but for most of the show, I was a rather passive spectator, watching the monkeys set the surrounding on fire and people going ape. I enjoyed the show, sure, I just couldn’t do all this joy-jumping like all these guys and girls, but I watched the Arctic Monkeys perform like a very well-oiled rock’ n’ roll band, totally in control of the game, may be too much in control?
Playing in front of gigantic lightning AM letters, that was blinding me each time their gold, white, red, blue lights were flashing right in my retina, the Arctic Monkeys played a very solid set with 7 songs off their latest release, and a little bit of each of their previous albums, while being very light on their 2011 ‘Suck It and See’ one. Since the first song ‘Do I wanna Know?’ the crowd went crazy, there were too many arms (carrying iPhones) in the air to count, the guitars were as aggressive as the lights, the vocals as strong as the riffs and QOSTA’s fingerprint was quite obvious all over certain songs of the new album. Like the LA metal-rock band, they had found the trick to mix thunderous and furious hooks with falsetto vocals and heavy dance beats, and ‘Dancing Shoes’ had never sounded so good. Frontman Alex Turner had all the glamorous poses on guitar, his arms in the air, making fighting-like moves, but he didn’t have to work very hard, the crowd was effortlessly following him at 100%. One thing is sure, these guys were cool and not the type to give a lecture on how people should enjoy their live moment and leave their phones alone for an hour or two,… I guess I had never seen so many iPhones raised at the same time than during the great elastic-bluesy guitar noise of ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’ or their hit ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’,… the whole concert must have been entirely recorded bit by bit, with this constantly-erected electronic forest. Beside this, the new t-shirt sold in their merchandize booth, printed with ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’ must have been some incentive to more weed smoking, and believe me, the pit was a sort of weed fest at times.
These monkeys had certainly more than one trick in their bag, there was a long way from the vigorous ‘Arabella’ to retro hooked ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’, to old-fashioned-lighters-riser ‘No.1 Party Anthem’. What? People still do that? No surprise really as the song could have been the perfect anthem of the 70s. From badass bass line to explosive guitars, speedy or bouncy rhythms, pounding heartbeat-like tempos, and abrupt stops, the energy was hardly slowing down, even though there was a sort of rupture when Turner dropped his guitar for a few songs, .
Mid set, he announced, ‘this is a song about bricks!’ (‘Old Yellow Bricks’), and played these pounding rhythms with a real urgency. And the sexinesss in all this? I spotted a pink bra, appropriately thrown at the neck of Turner’s guitar just before ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’… He rapidly got rid of it and the song turned into a singalong, while making later an allusion to the LA ladies who had come in large number, . ‘AM’ songs or no ‘AM’ songs, the old ones they had chosen to play were sitting well in the middle of the loud rumbling numbers, and the band managed to insert some Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ riff in the not-so-different robust ones of ‘Arabella’.
Turner was definitively credible as a frontman, and the delivery was tight and clean. ‘AM’ seems to have solidified Arctic Monkeys’ position on the US map (the album reached the highest chart debut in the U.S. of any Arctic Monkeys album), as the guys have definitively switched their hoodies for retro suits and greasy hair. They came back for an encore with more from ‘AM’ and a ‘LA ,we are yours for the week’ before erupting with a slick Black-Sabbath-esque ‘R U Mine?’ A kid even jumped on stage during this encore to steal the setlist, one more proof that these monkeys may have matched (even exceeded) their masters? Wait, wait, wait, I said I enjoyed the show, but I hadn’t any fire in the belly like all these people, it was a pleasant concert I would say, but where was my excitement? At the end, this Arctic Monkeys concert sounded like their ‘Arabella’ song, a tamed down version of Black Sabbath, far more fun than dangerous, for Sunday-weed-smokers and bra thrower.
Setlist
Do I Wanna Know?
Brianstorm
Dancing Shoes
Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair
Teddy Picker
Crying Lightning
Snap Out of it
Evil Twin (b side) of Suck It and See (2011)
Old Yellow Bricks
Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?
Arabella (with snippet of ‘War Pigs’)
Pretty Visitors (video)
I bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor
Cornerstone
No.1 Party Anthem (video)
Fluorescent Adolescent
Knee Socks (video)
Encore
One for the Road
Do Me a Favour
R U Mine?
