Without any notice, Arctic Monkeys just released ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ on iTunes, the single of their upcoming and fifth album. And it is a very good thing that it comes with an official animated video so we can taste it before consuming.
At the first listening, I was immediately struck by the Queens of the Stone Age’s creepy heavy vibe I got from it, it definitively sounds quite a bit like the Mojave-desert band’s last effort – or may be I have listened to ‘…’Like Clockwork’ too many times lately. Arctic Monkeys’ 2009 ‘Humbug’ was co-produced by Josh Homme, so this is hardly a surprise and the British band hasn’t probably completely brushed away the influence. Furthermore, according to Faster Louder, drummer Matt Helders’ mother tweeted late 2012 that the band was back in the desert, probably at Rancho De La Luna, Homme’s studio in Joshua Tree, so this sounds is hardly a surprise.With its dark slow burning atmosphere, ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ may also evoke some Black Keys’ bluesy leftovers sprawling for more than 4 minutes with a few falsetto lines over a sexy guitar lines and a catchy big chorus singing ‘crawling back to you’.
The video is fun too, starting minimalist and becoming more complex like the song, it totally reminded me, in a more elaborated form, these Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ laser shows, I used to go to at the Planetarium. The song is actually good, and quite captivating, but yeah I can’t get this QOTSA feeling out of my head.