Vier Sterne vom Guardian (Alexis Petridis):
An odd sense of uncertainty hangs over the third Arctic Monkeys album. They are almost guaranteed success: if Oasis’s continued ability to fill arenas proves anything, it’s that the kind of lumpen, lager-chucking fanbase both bands share doesn’t desert easily. But they have to change, as all bands predicated on earthily honest depictions of everyday life must when the money rolls in and the models start forming orderly queues to hump you. Alex Turner, now resident in Brooklyn with Alexa Chung, is some distance from the kebab vans and indie discos of their early tune From the Ritz to the Rubble. What you do when you’re removed from the environment that inspired you is a question their last album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, struggled to answer. It unsuccessfully tried adapting its predecessor’s arch, sarcastic stance to fit the world that Arctic Monkeys now inhabit on the charmless opener, Brianstorm. On the other hand, its highlights suggested Turner’s talents were infinitely more adaptable, and that he could write stories and draw beautifully sympathetic characters.
There are many avenues open to Turner, but perhaps the one you would least expect him to take is to start writing songs about his penis. And yet, here he is, opening Humbug with My Propeller, on which he spends three and a half minutes using a string of aviation metaphors in what appears to be a protracted attempt to convince someone to – and let’s not be needlessly bashful here – wank him off. „I can’t get it started on my own,“ he leers. „‚Ave a spin of my propeller.“
Behind him, Arctic Monkeys unveil their new, darker sound. If it’s not the exercise in heaviosity their increasing hirsuteness suggests, it’s as far from the brittle clang once heard on A Certain Romance and Mardy Bum as producer Josh Homme’s Californian desert studio is from Sheffield. There are occasional echoes of Homme’s Queens of the Stone Age, but the most obvious similarity it bears is to the Pixies: you can hear them in the spindly, shivering, echoing guitars and the chunky basslines that drive the songs along. You can also hear the brooding, sinister sexuality that suffused the Pixies‘ oeuvre: if Turner stops specifically singing about his penis after My Propeller, he turns out to be spectacularly good at coming up with oblique imagery suggestive of an inventively filthy mind working overtime.
Crying Lightning explores the hitherto unnoticed quivering eroticism to be found at the pick’n’mix counter – had Woolworths been able to exploit this idea as successfully, it would probably still be in business, albeit catering to a clientele largely comprised of perverts. „I smelt your scent on a seatbelt,“ he sings on Cornerstone, which may just be the best thing Arctic Monkeys have ever recorded. The lyrics are a dazzling display of what Turner can do: a fabulously witty, poignant evocation of lost love, packed with weirdly suggestive details. The music is a long, wistful acoustic sigh, the melody so effortlessly lovely that you can’t believe no one’s come up with it before.
Elsewhere, on Secret Door, Turner finally manages to negotiate a path between wryly observing the foibles of celebrity culture and sounding like rock’s answer to Nick and Margaret off The Apprentice, forever rolling his eyes and pursing his lips and bolstering, as he puts it, „a reputation as a miserable little tyke“. There’s something oddly tender about the song’s depiction of „fools on parade“, a sensation bolstered by another gorgeous, swooning melody.
If you had to level a criticism at Humbug, you could alight on the occasional moments when, in their desire to progress, Arctic Monkeys come close to jettisoning something of what made them special in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with Fire and the Thud or Dance Little Liar, but there’s none of the spark that marks out the band as a superior proposition to their peers: the lyrics are too oblique to connect and there’s not much of a tune behind the hazy atmospherics. Turner’s distinctive voice aside, they could be decent songs by anyone.
But perhaps that’s inevitable given the task Humbug sets itself. It’s the work of a band with enough nous to realise they will never again be what they once were: a phenomenal success that temporarily unites everyone from people who buy LPs in Tesco to rock hacks. Once you understand that, the choice is simple. You can either keep chasing an elusive past, relying on your fans‘ nostalgia, or you can press on, keeping your gaze fixed forward. The first option is easier, but Humbug admirably takes the second, with a confidence that suggests that if their days at the eye of the storm are behind them, Arctic Monkeys‘ best might be yet to come.
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