Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

I decided this would be a good case to try my hand at briefer reviews. I do love to ramble, but in some cases, for one reason or another, there's only so much I can add to the discourse about it. However, because I'm all ego like that, I still think what I have to say is as important as what's already been said. Or at least as important as anything else I say on this site. I picked up Whatever People Say I Am for the first time earlier this year, when I began re-examining a lot of the music I'd skipped over the past decade. I found that a lot of the contemporary reviews were problematic... either you're caught up in the hype, or you're caught up trying to diffuse the hype. Either way, it's less about the music than it ought to be.

The truth, as far as this music-loving a-hole is concerned, is that this album is worth every spot of ink it was splashed with on its release, and every "decade classic" notice it's gotten in retrospect. You could look at it as the culmination of the guitar revival of the mid-00's, as the early pre-In Rainbows high water mark for online marketing, but divorced from context, it's still utterly effective, barnstorming rock and roll.

It's all energy and show, rather than gazing inward at the self, sincerely or not, it looks outward at the world and presents what it sees. That's why it sounds so fresh, so lively, because it's heedless and reckless and caught up in the moment. The songs are so catchy, so blistering, that they keep me up at night humming them after two weeks of repeated listening, and they compete with each other for airtime in my head. Like anything they could be picked apart according to this criteria or that, but they hang together remarkably well so that if you like a couple songs, you love the album. This isn't art for art's sake, this is a fucking night out, no regrets in the morning. They do it all so naturally, it works so well, the band is like an organism.

The songs work within a niche together but don't repeat themselves too hard. The major repeating factors are the punk-funk guitars and motormouthed vocals with lyrics about nightlife, whether standing in line, spotting a chick across the dancefloor, learning when to call it a night or drinking somewhere you shouldn't. All of them, aside from the conspicuously low-key "Riot Van" are played either at blistering pace, or at swaggering tempo. Sometimes both interchangeably or simultaneously (neat trick, that.) They marry form to content so well the album becomes, in the words of some, an unofficial concept album. And in that capacity, it's better than most official ones. Without the trappings of narrative, it becomes a sort of Joycean everywhere thing. There's commentary here and there, such and a lot of character.

"I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" becomes one of the decade's best singles, with its insistent "bang-ba-ba-bang" outburst. It's supported by an album's worth of equal or better material. "Mardy Bum" for example, is the best song ever hooked around the phrase "cuddles in the kitchen," although I might have to double-check my research. It's all tossed off so casually, so naturally, you can buy into it, because they don't try to be badass or too cool for school. They present as a group of everydudes, who win some and lose some, and play with a self-accorded confidence in their ability, which sounds rock and roll enough for me. They also make the Northern English accent as cool as the American twang most bands sing in.

You can quibble all you want about its place in the history books, or about what it might all add up to, whether it means anything for society and what, but for me, as always, it begins and ends with a CD. And this is one bitchin' set of tunes.

Buy this album from iTunes now!