Announced late last week to the Arctic Monkeys fan base by e-mail and hurried out to the press, tonight’s gig was heralded from the off as promising something a bit special. I think we can safely say that having a supergroup cherry picked from the pantheon of recent rock gods as your support slot qualifies for that tag.
Them Crooked Vultures, a triumvirate of Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme on lead vocals, Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl on drums and Jon Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin on bass and keys are welcomed emphatically on stage, with Homme replying with a quick and polite ‘Hello’. Their formation was hinted at as long ago as 2005 by Grohl in magazine interviews and recently brought to life on stage at a spattering of European festival shows. The only song made public has been ‘Elephant’, and tonight they launch into this brash bluesy rocker, before shaking Brixton Academy’s rafters with a shudderingly loud and at times beautifully languid host of unheard of treats, including ‘Gunman’, ‘Mind Eraser’, ‘Caligula’ and Daffodils’, dedicated to tonight’s headliners.
With a crowd ready to eat from their very hands, the Arctic Monkeys walk on, replete with 3rd guitarist/keyboardist John Ashton (who spends most of the evening semi hidden stage right ) They look ready to step up to the plate, the stakes raised high and hot by tonights, ahem, ‘warm up’. With hair grown long and guitars dropped low they launch into ‘My Propeller’ opener from new album ‘Humbug’, released just 2 days ago – but still enough time for half of tonight’s audience to learn the words. A confident and brooding but still energetic start continues through their B-Side Nick Cave cover ‘Red Right Hand’ into ‘Crying Lightening’, Humbugs first single and most traditional sounding new Monkeys track.
Watching young Turner sing a Nick Cave song with his own inflections on the tone and style of the great man is a nice early development on display. Gone is the guitar held just under the neck and thrashed at lightening speed, replaced with a grittier low-slung sound and stance, occasionally peppered with a rock-out swirl of the newly grown barnet. And on a couple of tonight’s new numbers, most notably ‘Potion Approaching’ Turner even drops the guitar altogether to give us all a bit of full frontal vocal action.
The new songs, clearly influenced by Turner’s musical learning on his Last Shadow Puppet’s experience, are confidently delivered, and despite not having the indie pop gusto of their first two albums are delivered in the first half of the set with a fine mix of vigour and melody, and are balanced well with more familiar offerings like ‘Brianstorm’, ‘Still Take You Home’ and a blistering ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ which was interestingly tinted by a rather lucky ( or intentional ) drop of the sound levels before kicking back in right at THAT ultimate crowd response moment two thirds in.
The sound issues become more prominent in ‘Humbug’s’ penultimate track ‘Pretty Visitors’, dedicated to Josh Homme and his Vultures. Menacing and slow in its break, it is driven by some stunning trademark scattergun Helder’s drumming and the classic Turner line ‘What came first, the chicken or the dickhead? Despite these obvious sound glitches it is segued perfectly into ‘This House Is A Circus’ with Jamie Cook sounding like his gutteral guitar is being ground into gravel through pedals pinched straight from the garage of Homme.
Favourite Worst Nightmare’s track that hints most at the new more cinematic direction Humbug has taken, ‘If You Were There Beware’, leads us into an altogether slower section of the evening’s proceedings, broken only by the energy of ‘The View From The Afternoon’. ‘Dangerous Animals’ and soon to be classic teenage crooner ‘Cornerstone’ are followed by Favourite Worst Nightmares slower moments ‘Only Ones Who Know’, ‘Do Me A Favour’ and pre-encore anthem ‘Flourescent Adolescent’
It’s a more muted crowd that welcome their heroes back on for surprise encore ‘Secret Door’ and recent live favourite ‘505’ and off into the night fly our Monkeys and Vultures, taking with them the answer to rumours that tonight’s warm up will be replicated at this weekend’s Reading and Leeds weekender.
It’s refreshing to see Arctic Monkeys take up a new challenge in their sound. Its great to hear them drop set staples like ‘A Certain Romance’ and move on from rhythmic rants of scumbags and riot vans, but you cant help but notice that the pace and more epic tone of the second half of tonight’s performance took some by surprise, and disappointed (a small minority of) others.
I guess that’s what any band whose first album captures the hearts of an entire country’s teenage audience must be at odds with. Do you stick to what you’ve already nailed and keep the kids happy or do you grow and test your own, and your audience’s boundaries?
Words by Brian Murnin
View photos from the event here!
