Alex Turner doesn’t care about you. You may have bought tickets for him and his band at the beautiful Fox Theater. You may have sipped a pre-concert Greyhound at Café Van Kleef in anticipation. You may have waited around for the half-hour it took him and the rest of the Arctic Monkeys to hit the stage. But, they probably would have shown up and played anyway. You didn’t need to be there. You were just an extra set of molecules standing in a theater. You were amongst the humans looking in, as was I. And that sight was pretty fucking spectacular.
With two large Buddha statues staring me in the face, I watched a couple of long-haired English boys assault their guitar strings with very little regard for any of the peace they may have been interrupting. They rattled off “Dance Little Liar” and “Brianstorm," before their newest single, “Crying Lighting," erupted into a cacophony of guitars and Turner’s stoic Yorkshire accent. Sounding more like a drunken middle-aged man instead of the mildly over-served 23-year-old that was standing before us, Turner mumbled a few things between songs, which I’m sure the UK contingent in the crowd couldn’t even understand. No matter though, this band didn’t become internationally famous for being elite showmen. Its pretty clear that they are the type of outfit that relied heavily upon their gifts—and it’s working. There were points where I turned to look at the rest of the audience, only to notice that the whole theater was singing along and that plenty of British ex-pats lined the crowd.
The band mostly played songs off the new album, Humbug, a slower and more “mature” sound that isn’t necessarily lacking on the guitar. Admittedly, I’ve been slow to embrace the new album and felt a bit lost at times during the show. Looking back on it, I think this performance was one that pushed me off the fence I was straddling into a full acceptance of new direction the band has taken. That said, it’s pretty clear that Alex, Jamie Cook, Matt (his drumming is insane) Helder and Nick O’Malley still know how to push the ability of their instruments. An amp suffered the worst of their brutality as it continued screaming as they left the stage for the first time, prior to the encore. No, that wasn’t some girl shrieking continuously for three minutes straight.
Their little break backstage did very little to change the band’s demeanor, as they strolled back on stage as sure of themselves as they were 90 minutes beforehand. They found their way into “Fluorescent Adolescence” and ended with a chord reminiscent of “Baby I’m Yours” (a song they covered for an EP last year) and finished the evening with my favorite track off of Favourite Worst Nightmare, “505."
So, as far as I’m concerned, Alex can go on not caring about me or the rest of the us fans, because his devotion to music is all I really care about.
Artist:
www.arcticmonkeys.com
myspace.com/arcticmonkeys
Album:
Arctic Monkeys – Humbug is out now. Buy it on Amazon.
