I might as well use the two gushing reviews (one from each side of the pond) for these two.
#2
Arctic Monkeys - AM
215 Points, 11 votes, 8 top 5 votes
Ranked Highest By: Northern Voice, Kenny Powers, Nick Vermeil, Eephus, E-Z Glider, Abraham, D House, Fly
Previous Albums on Our Countdowns: Suck It And See (#32 in 2011), Favourite Worst Nightmare (39th in 2007), Whatever People Say I Am (36th in 2006)
Album Review: Arctic Monkeys’ fifth record is absolutely and unarguably the most incredible album of their career. It might also be the greatest record of the last decade. It’s not, however, the work of a band operating at their absolute peak – that’s yet to come. It’s the work of a band still growing, still fine-tuning, still learning and still experimenting; a band who will not look back on this record as a career high, but as the moment they stopped being defined by genre and instead became artists. Not a rock band, definitely not an indie band, but artists. Think Bowie, think The Beatles, think Stevie Wonder and think Bob Dylan. From this point on, Arctic Monkeys can do whatever they want, sound however they like, and always be Arctic Monkeys. But that’s all for another day, sometime in their stupidly bright future. For now, we should celebrate this record for what it is – 41 minutes and 57 seconds of near perfection.
Let’s begin with the details. Twelve tracks, recorded at Sage & Sound Recording in Los Angeles and Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, California, featuring guest appearances from Queens Of The Stone Age’s Josh Homme, Elvis Costello’s drummer Pete Thomas and ex-Coral man Bill Ryder-Jones. It was produced by James Ford and co-produced by Ross Orton, with mixing from Tchad Blake, who worked on The Black Keys’ 2010 breakthrough album, ‘Brothers’. It’s a record about sex, lust, frustration and isolation, and about getting really, really high. As you will have already read in NME, it’s a total West Coast record that’s as much late-’90s hip-hop in sound as it is mid-’70s rock. And the lyrics… oh, maaaan. At times they sound like they were written by a man with a burning hard-on who wants – or rather needs – to savagely #### your body, mind and soul.
That man, of course, is Alex Turner, one of only a handful of musicians dead or alive that it’s not completely ludicrous to describe as an actual genius. On ‘AM’ – as he has been for the past 18 months or so – he’s channelling the spirit of another one of that select bunch, John Lennon. And we’re not just talking about the Hamburg quiff here. Throughout the record, you can’t get away from Lennon’s presence, never more so than on ‘Arabella’, the cornerstone of the album, where Dre collides into Sabbath with the elegance of a horny drunk on a lost weekend. Alex’s wordplay echoes the surrealism of ‘I Am The Walrus’ or ‘Come Together’, announcing that “Arabella’s got some interstellagator skin boots/And a helter-skelter around her little finger and I ride it endlessly” before slamming into a vocal delivery lifted straight from the chorus of Lennon’s 1975 Old Grey Whistle Test recording of ‘Stand By Me’. In keeping with the influences of the record, there’s a whiff of Eminem in the way he rolls his elongated sentences across a few lines of melody, finding rhymes in the middle of lines where less gifted songwriters wouldn’t even think to look. Speaking about Lennon to NME last year, Alex explained how difficult he found trying to write in such a way: “It’s all a jumble, but it’s not just that. It paints you a picture and puts you in this place. He’s got a way of leading you somewhere with these unusual words that don’t make sense, but also make perfect ####### sense.” Right here, he’s nailed it. Unsurprisingly, they’re Alex’s favourite lyrics on the album. But they’re not the best.
For those, take your pick of the opening lines to ‘Do I Wanna Know?’, the slow-grinding juggernaut of handclaps, feet stomps and that Jamie Cook riff that kicks off the whole record (“Have you got colour in your cheeks/Do You ever get the fear that you can’t shift/The type that sticks around like something in your teeth?”), the sexed-up chorus of the R&B-influenced ‘One For The Road’ (“So we all go back to yours and you sit and talk to me on the floor/There’s no need to show me round, baby, I feel like I’ve been here before”), or the heart-stopping beauty of ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ (“I wanna be your vacuum cleaner/Breathing in your dust/I wanna be your Ford Cortina/I will never rust”). The latter’s lyrics are lifted straight from a John Cooper Clarke poem with slight tweaks and an added chorus. It’s the last track on the record and highlights the confidence that Alex is now writing with, where he can leave you with a feeling that he’s saying, “Yeah, I’m good, but check this guy out.” It only adds to the sense that the best is yet to come from this band.
In-between ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ and ‘I Wanna Be Yours’, the record bristles with that same confidence and depth. You already know ‘R U Mine?’, the song whose sound informed the entire writing and recording process and introduced the world to The Cosmic Opera Melodies Of The Space Choirboys (namely Matt Helders and Nick O’Malley doing their best falsettos), and ‘Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?’, where Helders’ drums have never sounded so hip-hop as they beat out the rhythm to Alex’s pissed-up booty call. As for the rest, ‘I Want It All’ is a pure glam-rock stomp, ‘No 1 Party Anthem’ could have been lifted straight from Alex Turner’s own Submarine soundtrack or Lennon’s ‘Double Fantasy’, ‘Mad Sounds’ pitches somewhere between a sleazy Lou Reed slowie and a Primal Scream ballad, ‘Fireside’ (featuring Bill Ryder-Jones) gallops along on a mariachi rhythm, dragging the desert influence back into the city, and ‘Snap Out Of It’ swirls with such orchestral intensity that it wouldn’t feel out of place on a second Last Shadow Puppets album.
If Arctic Monkeys had never walked into the desert with Josh Homme to record ‘Humbug’ in 2009, they could never have made ‘AM’. ‘Humbug’ was as much about subverting people’s impressions of who the band were as it was an album in its own right. It was a shedding of the skin, a descending of the bollocks, where riffs became heavy and boys became men. But most importantly it condemned the first incarnation of Arctic Monkeys – the bright-eyed teenage know-it-alls with hits tumbling out of their trackie bottoms pockets – to a shallow grave in the sand. ‘Humbug’ was the first evolution of the Monkeys, ‘AM’ is the second, which in a completely ####ed-up way makes 2011’s masterpiece ‘Suck It And See’ the most insignificant record in the band’s history.
Homme’s presence is most prominently felt on ‘Knee Socks’, where he repays the favour for Alex’s involvement in the most recent Queens Of The Stone Age record by adding a haunting, agonised howl to a Destiny’s Child-style breakdown that flips Merry Clayton’s ‘Gimme Shelter’ vocal on its head. It’s a fitting, heavyweight contribution from the man who many originally thought had destroyed the Arctic Monkeys with his influence, but who history will remember as the man who helped turn them into gods.
So yes, look at the score, listen to the record, and bask in the glory of knowing that while this may be chapter five of the complete history, it’s the first act of the real golden age.
-NME
#1
Vampire Weekend - Modern Vampires of the City
275 Points, 15 votes, 11 top 5 votes
Ranked Highest By: Steve Tasker, The Dreaded Marco, themeanmachine, Kenny Powers, Disco Stu, Northern Voice, Time Kibitzer, pettifogger, kupcho1, Fly, D House
Previous Albums on Our Countdowns: Contra (#26 in 2010), Vampire Weekend (#8 in 2008)
Album Review: “It’s really hard to even talk about the internet without seeming instantly corny," Ezra Koenig told Pitchfork recently, "even the word 'blog' sounds a little grandma-y." He should know. The Vampire Weekend singer and lyricist gave up on his own Blogspot site, Internet Vibes, seven years ago, as he finished up his English studies at Columbia University (the final post's title: "I HATE BLOGGING"). But before he graduated from the ye olde blogosphere, Koenig held forth on a vast array of topics-- from geography, to Wellington boots, to music writer Robert Christgau's allegedly unfair critique of Billy Joel's oeuvre-- looking at everything from a incisively self-aware, curious, and optimistic angle. What's most impressive is the way he's able to connect art and ideas from different eras and continents into a kind of ecstatic worldview. One particularly inspired ramble spins an analytic web from a friend's visit to Morocco, the history of the Strait of Gibraltar, a 1984 interview between Bob Dylan and Bono, the film The Secret of Roan Inish, and National Geographic's famed Afghan refugee cover-- and not only does it make sense, it's written in a way that's funny and smart and completely inclusive. Pretty good for a 22-year-old kid from middle-class New Jersey. Now 28, Koenig's creative medium has changed, but his omnivorous cultural appetite has not.
Take "Step", the third song on Vampire Weekend's third album, Modern Vampires of the City-- the record that is already forcing one-time haters of this band to rethink their entire lives. At its core, the song reads like an ode to obsessive music fandom in which the object of Koenig's affection is "entombed within boombox and walkman." Modest Mouse are name-checked. But the sense of infatuation extends beyond a list of influences and is embedded into the music itself. The chorus and parts of the melody are borrowed from wordy Oakland rap act Souls of Mischief's "Step to My Girl"-- which itself samples Grover Washington, Jr.'s version of a Bread song called "Aubrey". But "Step" avoids back-patting nostalgia and debunks bogus generational hierarchies while using the past to inspire the present. It's also melancholy, with Vampire Weekend musical mastermind Rostam Batmanglij surrounding Koenig's musings with lilting harpsichord ambience. Because, as we know, music is a young man's pursuit. "Wisdom's a gift but you'd trade it for youth," Koenig sings.
Still, Vampire Weekend make a damn good case for wisdom all across Modern Vampires. Yes, this is a more grown-up album. It largely trades in the Africa-inspired giddiness of their first two records for a sound that's distinctly innate and closer to the ear. There's more air in these songs, more spontaneity, more dynamics. The overarching themes-- death and a dubious sense of faith-- are certainly Serious. But you never feel like you're being preached at while listening to this album.
Koenig and company are probably more clever and gifted than you, sure-- but they're not rubbing your face in it or anything. Their message is one of collective understanding and betterment, and Modern Vampires is the kind of album that'll have you Googling for Buddhist temples and Old Testament allusions at 3 a.m. while listening to reggae great Ras Michael (who's sampled on opener "Obvious Bicycle"). Now, you don't have to get obsessed to enjoy this music, but it's presented with such care that you can't help but want to learn about its deeper meanings. So while Koenig gave up a potential teaching career to take his chances as a rock singer, he's still doling out knowledge in his own way.
Though the record often traverses in darkness-- the zipped-tight "Finger Back" alludes to historic atrocities and brutality while "Hudson", easily the band's bleakest track to date, imagines an apocalyptic Manhattan-- there's also hope here. Partly because Vampire Weekend seem to have internalized all of the positive traits of their internet-soaked generation while resisting the ugly ones: they'll offer jokes and humanity on Twitter without navel-gazing; they'll play a concert for a credit-card company while roping in Steve Buscemi for promo videos that are no-#### funny; they'll use the tools of modernity to expand their universe rather than contract it. And then they'll go ahead and crack your heart in two.
Along with the more lived-in sonics, Modern Vampires has the band taking a leap forward into emotional directness. Koenig and Batmanglij truly seem of one mind here, as the vocals and music interact with each other in an effortless flow. While skronks and snares pop on "Diane Young", the singer matches the live-fast intensity hit-for-hit. The song is a dissection of the 27 Club rock'n'roll myth, where Koenig's voice on the sly "baby, baby, baby" bridge is manipulated to intoxicating effect.
Then there's "Hannah Hunt". In some sense, it seems like Vampire Weekend's entire career thus far has led to this one song. It begins with the hiss of wind and some vague background chatter-- the sounds of the everyday-- before it's all quickly tuned out in favor of Batmanglij's piano and bassist Chris Baio's upright plucks. Koenig comes in soft, telling of a couple on a cross-country road trip. His details-- crawling vines, mysterious men of faith, newspaper kindling-- are sparse, delicate, perfect. And then, after two minutes and 40 seconds of quiet beauty, the song blooms, and Koenig lets it absolutely rip: "If I can't trust you then damn it, Hannah/ There's no future/ There's no answer/ Though we live on the U.S. dollar/ You and me, we got our own sense of time." On an album preoccupied with the ominous ticking of clocks, this is the moment that stops them cold.
Koenig has said in recent interviews that the band's three albums make up a trilogy. "Hannah Hunt" could be a sobering continuation of Contra's Springsteen-ian "Run", where two people decide to up and leave their known lives in search of some sort of American transcendence. There's also a perilous chandelier at the center of new track "Everlasting Arms", perhaps a callback to the hanging lights that cover the band's debut LP. And the Modern Vampires font is the same exact one used in a trailer for Koenig's absurd-looking college-era werewolf movie, from which Vampire Weekend got its name. These little links are not only satisfying, but inevitable. After years of engaging with anything and everything in reach, Vampire Weekend are now a primary source in their own right.
My biggest surprise as I was compiling was Phosphorescent, had no idea that album was so popular here.
