LEE PAYNE

Tag: reading

  • Listen To This: There’d Better Be A Mirrorball by Arctic Monkeys

    My favourite band, Arctic Monkeys, released their first new material in more than four years this week.

    There’d Better Be A Mirrorball is the first single to be released from their new album, The Car, which is out on 21st October.

    The Sheffield band spent some time recording last summer at the 14th century Butley Priory in Suffolk. People there said: “Being serenaded while watering and weeding the garden, listening to the double bass, drums and piano wafting out of the open double doors, was pretty nice.”

    I’ve been playing the new song on repeat since it was released, and when I haven’t it has been running through my mind like a particularly voracious earworm. The word I would use to describe it is sumptuous – there are so many layers to enjoy. Alex Turner’s voice sounds better than ever, deep and brooding, with the strings giving it Bond theme vibes. Lyrically, it’s a break up song; I’ve heard it described as “Mardy Bum for grown ups”. Here are my favourite lines:

    Darling, if I were you
    And how’s that insatiable appetite?
    For the moment whеn you look them in the eyеs
    And say, “Baby, it’s been nice“

    There’d Better Be A Mirrorball by Arctic Monkeys

    Arctic Monkeys played their first gig since 2019 in Istanbul, Turkey at the beginning of August and made their way across Europe performing mainly at festivals before headlining Reading + Leeds Festival last weekend. You can see highlights of their set here.

    The photos above are just a snapshot of my bedroom, which since being redecorated recently has become something of an Arctic Monkeys shrine. Now you’ve seen those, you’ll hopefully understand that for me the release of new music from them is like Christmas. I already know what will be the soundtrack to my autumn.

  • Listen To This: Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

    Listen To This: Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

    You’ve had two number one albums. The first was the fastest selling debut album in British music history. You’ve won the Mercury Prize. You’ve headlined Glastonbury. Where do you go from here?

    Many would have been tempted to stick to the formula that had brought such huge success, releasing a rinse-and-repeat third album to please the masses. Not Arctic Monkeys.

    After a whirlwind period in which the Sheffield band’s first two albums had been released within fifteen months of each other, there was more of a gap between 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare and its follow up. The front man, Alex Turner, recorded with his side project The Last Shadow Puppets – the resulting album, The Age of the Understatement, also went to number one.

    The four members of Arctic Monkeys had first met Josh Homme while playing the support act for his band, American rock outfit Queens of the Stone Age, in Houston. The idea of working together was mooted and in late 2008 they began making music with Homme in his recording studio near Los Angeles. They then continued to work in another studio in the Mojave Desert – about as far away from suburban Sheffield as it is possible to imagine.

    The result was Humbug.

    Album cover of Humbug by Arctic Monkeys

    Track listing (click to listen)

    My Propeller
    Crying Lightning
    Dangerous Animals
    Secret Door
    Potion Approaching
    Fire and the Thud
    Cornerstone
    Dance Little Liar
    Pretty Visitors
    The Jeweller’s Hands

    Ten tracks, all written by Turner as usual, but this time the lyrics were more abstract and instead of just guitars and drums those lyrics were accompanied by keyboards, xylophones, glockenspiels and shakers.

    I won’t go into detail about each song, but here a couple of things I want to say: Fire and the Thud was written about Turner’s then-girlfriend Alexa Chung, and Cornerstone contains my favourite lyrics in the entire Monkeys canon.

    Tell me, where’s your hiding place?

    I’m worried I’ll forget your face

    And I’ve asked everyone

    I’m beginning to think I imagined you all along

    Cornerstone by Arctic Monkeys

    Humbug was released in the UK on 24th August 2009, which was not just the day before my 17th birthday but also five days before Arctic Monkeys headlined Reading Festival with a set that included seven of the new album’s ten tracks. They were almost unrecognisable from the band that had performed on the same stage just three years earlier – the hair was longer, the guitars louder, the mood darker.

    Arctic Monkeys headlining Reading Festival in 2009

    As such a major departure from their earlier work, it took some fans time to get their heads around Humbug but it was another number one album for the band and is now seen as something of a gateway for them – a record that allowed them to break out of the image of cheeky indie lads and into bona fide rock stars. It paved the way for AM, the album that broke America, and the other-worldly Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

    Yes, I’m well aware that I’m biased (I’ve listened to Arctic Monkeys nearly every day for years), but I urge you to give this album a listen.

  • Listen To This: Leave Before The Lights Come On by Arctic Monkeys

    Arctic Monkeys in 2006

    Every now and again I am going to present a track I think you should listen to under the title ‘Listen To This’.

    I have written before about my favourite band Arctic Monkeys and their sixth studio album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. My first track for this feature is a Monkeys song, but this one was released as a standalone single in 2006 between their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and their second release Favourite Worst Nightmare.

    It’s called Leave Before The Lights Come On.

    I think the band’s frontman Alex Turner is a lyrical genius and the words to this song would fit in very well with their phenomenally sucessful debut album.

    That was essentially a concept album about nightlife in a big English city. Turner drew on his experiences of nights out in his native Sheffield to craft a compelling collection of songs that almost everyone between the ages of 16 and 21 in the country could relate to.

    Leave Before The Lights Come On basically describes a one night stand. It would have slotted nicely onto the album but it says something about it when a song as strong as this doesn’t make the cut. When the band performed it at Reading festival in 2006, Turner described it as ‘the black sheep of the family… but we love it all the same.’

    And how can you wake up with someone you don’t love

    And not feel slightly fazed by it?

    Arctic Monkeys – Leave Before The Lights Come On

    Turner’s lyrics are well supported by the rest of the band. Each of the four members has to work hard on it, and that was one of the things that makes me love it so much. Matt Helders gets it going with his pounding drums, Andy Nicholson (and latterly Nick O’Malley) come in with the bass and Jamie Cook combines brilliantly with Turner on guitar. The song feels very well structured – it tells a story from start to finish in 3 minutes and 47 seconds. If I was in a band, I’d definitely cover it as everyone in the band would have a big part to play.

    The music video for the song features the actor Paddy Considine, who was in 24 Hour Party People, Submarine and Hot Fuzz amongst other things.

    Finally, here is the band performing the song during their headline set at Glastonbury in 2007.