Monkeys' album worthy transition

By Jordan Sargent

Published April 27, 2007

Is it possible to live up to having a debut album named the fifth best British album ever released by a certain high-profile British rock magazine — even ahead of every album by such unknowns as The Beatles, The Clash and Blur — on the day it was released? The short answer is "no," but last year, the Arctic Monkeys gave it a hell of a try.

Their world-ending debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, didn't even seem like that much to get worked up about. It was brash, straightforward and defiant. At times, it sounded like a ska record, at others, a punk record and sometimes even like a ska-punk record. It had many exhilaratingly great songs and few dreadful ones. In short, it sounded exactly like what it was: an album made by four self-taught teens in a post-Libertines/Strokes United Kingdom.

And that's not to short-change it because it remains a brilliant and fun record, one of the year's best releases, and at the very least, it is a superb first album from a band that had more pressure on it than Tony Blair and the Queen of England combined.

But Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not is not really a befitting motto for the band's leader/mastermind Alex Turner, a kid who was widely (and wisely) praised for being as quick with his pen as he was with his guitar pick. On that album, Turner drafted a whip-smart and hilarious look at British life as he saw it, a world rife with posers, dickhead cops, prostitutes, brawlers and bawlers. If Whatever People Say revealed him as one of contemporary rock's sharpest and most observant songwriters, then Favourite Worst Nightmare shows him to be one of it's most cerebral.

Turner, for the most part, navigates the same waters here as he did on Whatever People Say, but the songs ooze with more conceit, resignation and at times, resentment.

"Fluorescent Adolescent" nicks the portrait of a prostitute from last album's "When the Sun Goes Down," but it trades in that song's foreboding warnings for rearview mirror gazing.

"Teddy Picker" follows along the bouncy lines of "Fake Tales of San Francisco," but instead of unleashing his backhanded vitriol on bandwagoners, it's the music press. Where "Fake Tales" sounded annoyed, "Teddy Picker" sounds pissed, but it's no less stinging ("Sorry sunshine it doesn't exist/ It wasn't in the Top 100 list").

Turner's change in song matter is even more apparent here on the ballads. Whatever People Say's slow-burners were pub sing-alongs, but on Favourite, they drip with regret and sorrow.

"Only Ones Who Know," a stunning keyboard and slide-guitar-only lounge ballad, sees Turner lamenting his own loneliness. "Do Me a Favour" one-ups it with an outro of guitar smashing that immediately resonates as the band's most emotional recorded moment.

Musically, the rest of the band thrashes harder and darker than before. Confidence and swagger abound from this record, especially in drummer Matt Helders, who pounds his kit ragged from song one to 12. If Turner is taking a step back to peer further lyrically inward, his band is darting and plowing forward.

Favourite Worst Nightmare doesn't best its predecessor, but all things considered, it's a near triumph for the Monkeys. And though the music isn't any better per se, the band itself — Turner and Helders especially — has improved and matured two-fold.

Where this album will stand in the band's canon five albums from now obviously remains to be seen, but it looks to be a winning transition. It is the album in which the Monkeys stepped into a dark alley and emerged with 30 pounds of gained muscle, wiping a tear from their eyes.