Pages tagged “arctic monkeys”

We’ve known for a while that Arctic Monkeys are at work on a follow-up to Favourite Worst Nightmare, but we now have first real news on the new album—and, well, it’s kinda unexpected. The much-hyped Sheffield boys are headed across the Atlantic to California to record new tracks… with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme as producer.

Haven’t looked so good on the dance floor since Alex Turner and his clan of cold chimps took you though your Favourite Worst Nightmare over a year ago? Like Alex Turner’s solo record but just didn’t think you could two-step to it? Well, dust off your old post-punk dancing shoes (And seriously, get some new shoestrings. Don't make us have to tell you again.), because the Arctic Monkeys are back at it again.

After dropping their sophomore effort, Favourite Worst Nightmare, in the U.S. yesterday, those young Arctic Monkeys are coming to North America for a tour lasting most of May.

An appearance at April’s Coachella festival will kick off the tour, and Nashville’s Be Your Own Pet opens all the shows.

Read more about the Arctic Monkeys at Coachella, and all the summer festival information you can handle, in the May issue of Paste, on newsstands now.

April
27 - Indio, Calif. @ Coachella Valley Music Festival

May
1 - San Francisco, Calif. @ Warfield Theatre
2 - Portland, Ore. @ Roseland Theatre
3 - Seattle, Wash. @ The Showbox
4 - Vancouver B.C. @ Commodore Ballroom
7 - Minneapolis, Minn. @ First Avenue
8 - Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
9 - Pontiac, Mich. @ Clutch Cargo's
11 - Toronto, Ontario @ Kool Haus
12 - Montreal, Quebec @ Theatre Olympia
13 - Boston, Mass. @ Avalon
15 - New York, N.Y. @ Hammerstein Ballroom
16 - Washington D.C. @ 9:30 Club
17 - Philadelphia, Penn. @ Electric Factory
19 - Atlanta, Ga. @ The Tabernacle
20 - Orlando, Fla. @ Hard Rock Live

Related links:
Arctic Monkeys’ site
Arctic Monkeys on MySpace
Be Your Own Pet’s site

The Arctic Monkeys recently wrapped up work on the follow-up to last year’s breakout success, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. Slated for an April 23 release on Domino Records, Favourite Worst Nightmare will feature the single “Brianstorm,” which drops stateside a week before the LP.

All we’ve got for now is a tracklist, but stay tuned for tour plans and more.

Favourite Worst Nightmare tracklist:

1. Brianstorm
2. Teddy Picker
3. D is for Dangerous
4. Balaclava
5. Fluorescent Adolescent
6. Only Ones Who Know
7. Do Me a Favour
8. This House Is a Circus
9. If You Were There, Beware
10. The Bad Thing
11. Old Yellow Bricks
12. 505

Related Links:
Arctic Monkeys’ homepage
Arctic Monkeys on MySpace
Domino Records’ homepage

"Anticipation has the habit to set you up? / For disappointment in evening entertainment but?/ Tonight there’ll be some love / Tonight there’ll be a rawkus, regardless of what’s gone before" -View From the Afternoon

Sitting in bar half a block from the Tabernacle, a former church turned music venue in Atlanta’s downtown Five Points district, I was trying to avoid being outside.

I looked out the window to where I was supposed to be—on the opposite sidewalk, standing in line for a sold-out show to see the Sheffield, England’s Arctic Monkeys, a band whose debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, had been released in the U.K. earlier this year, and sold more than 350,000 copies its first week, the fastest-selling debut in British history.

The band was currently in the middle of a North American tour, which to no real surprise had quickly sold out. A twenty-something sitting to my right noticed me staring and started talking about the show. It turned out he’d been following the band along their tour, catching one of the earliest performances back in Tempe, Ariz. “No encore,” he said. “They blitz the place and get out.”

He continued to talk about the group and how he couldn’t stop listening to their record, but after awhile I became puzzled with his unwavering devotion to a bunch of kids who still lived with their parents. For now I pushed my questions aside and looked back towards the window.

The line was now gone. The doors had been opened.

Telling the man next to me that I hoped he’d enjoy the show, I made my way down the street.

“One look sends it coursing through the veins oh how the feeling races / Back up to their brains to form expressions on there stupid faces? / They don't want to say hello / Like I want to say hello” -You Probably Couldn’t See For the Lights But You Were Staring Straight at Me

The Tabernacle, a modest brick building with a number of large double doors taking up the greater part of its façade, sits just a few blocks from the mammoth trifecta that is the southern city’s CNN Center, Omni Hotel, and Philips Arena.

Climbing the stairs to the balcony I found an available open place to stand. As the night progressed, with We Are Scientists leaving the stage, people began filing in and filling whatever space wasn’t already taken by another warm body.

When the Arctic Monkeys eventually stepped onstage, they initially seemed to come across somewhat standoffishly, with lead singer/guitarist Alex Turner offering only a sardonic quip or comment between each song.

The music left the feeling of being hit with a blunt object, never straying far from the fixed sound of Whatever People Say…, but leaving little room for mental absorption. With such fast-paced strumming and percussion, as well as the lyrical bombardment through such tracks as “Dancing Shoes,” “From the Ritz to the Rubble” and “I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor,” the Arctic Monkeys only seemed to further the distance between themselves and their audience.

But while accusations of being uncharismatic come to mind about a band’s inability to engage its audience, I began to think that for the band to behave any differently might have been dishonest.

The thing about the Arctic Monkeys—or at least the strange gravitational draw possessed in Britain as well as in the States—has a lot to do with the kind of perspective they’ve naturally come to embrace and represent on stage, the kind of wrenching outlook that could only come from a generation caught in that unfortunate place between responsibility and the more immediately attractive option of indifference, looking to pass the time with just a few more drinks and late night outings.

Amidst the succinct hooks and conversational, wordy lyrics, the night was about documenting the unglamorous but always exciting aspects of aimlessness, about the meaningless events that turn into the best stories you can’t help but tell over and over again.

I wound up getting home a little after 11:30. My roommate walked in shortly after and asked me why I was home so early. I told her there wasn’t an encore. There really wasn’t a need.

Hometown: Sheffield, England
Members [L-R]: Jamie Cook, guitar; Matt Helders, drums; Alex Turner, guitar/vocals; Andy Nicholson, bass
Fun fact: Frontman Alex Turner, who wrote “Fake Tales of San Francisco,” recalls every minute of his grandma-chaperoned trip to the Bay Area when he was eight.
Why they’re worth watching: The Monkeys turned the U.K. pop world on its ear in ’05 by rocketing a series of singles to the top of the charts, bolstered by a diehard retinue of singalong, tour-following fans dubbed the Arctic Army.
For fans of: Franz Ferdinand, Buzzcocks, Undertones

The group’s currently untitled Domino debut has yet to be released, but the Arctic Monkeys—by word of mouth alone—are already the biggest, must-hear buzz band Britain has seen since the glory days of Oasis. How did this happen? Even 19-year-old lead singer Alex Turner—on a 12-hour San Francisco layover before heading to Monkey-rabid Japan—isn’t so sure. The combo formed two years ago in industrial-grim Sheffield with an unusually bright outlook. As soon as they’d finish a demo, Turner says, “we’d hand ’em out at our shows. And the audience took those demos we made and spread ’em around, for whatever reason—copied ’em or put ’em on their websites.”

A behavior reminiscent of—gulp!—tie-dyed, tape-haggling Deadheads? Turner heartily guffaws. “I know! That’s pretty much what it was! And through trading, people got a certain affection for the songs and really started to care … so by the time we actually released something, people were so into it already that they went right out and bought it and we topped the British charts that week.”

The upcoming album, Turner says, will probably feature early hits like “I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor” and “When The Sun Goes Down” (a true-crime tale of sordid after-dark activity in Sheffield), plus new numbers “Riot Van,” “Still Take You Home” and “The View From The Afternoon.” Do the Monkeys have what it takes to be stars? Turner—a shy, soft-spoken lad—turns into a veritable whirling dervish onstage, typhooning through a pogo-manic set like some CBGB’s vet from the ’70s. And half the S.F. crowd, believe it or not, is singing along with every bombastic syllable.