Listen To: Arctic Monkeys - Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair'
By: Mike Harounoff
I've always found the correlation between band and fan ageing very interesting. I suppose for me personally Arctic Monkeys were very much 'that' band for me. Had I been born a few years earlier, it would have been The Strokes or The Libertines, but I wasn't and I got the Arctic Monkeys. At the time, that was excellent. It was social commentary just as I was beginning to commentate on my own life, it was talking about going out just as I was beginning to go out, and it was talking about the trials and tribulations of love just as I was... you get the point. They were a band I believed would stay with me for all of my life, but as I've discussed before, this was at a point where I was very much unaware of taste, in particular how it changes. Whilst a lot of my excitement for the band remained on the arrival of their sophmore album , by the third it had all but gone. Of course, the band hadn't necessarily gotten any worse, they'd just changed as had I. The third album didn't really enter my world and it didn't seem to make too much of an effort to either, but there's something different about 'Suck It And See', their upcoming fourth LP. Somehow me and the band are meeting somewhere in the middle, and they're becoming relevant to me again. I thought 'Brick by Brick' was a great song and was initially suprised when I noticed that opinion seemed to be split down the middle. Of course, tons of factors go into making an opinion on a band has big as Arctic Monkeys, but still.
Now we've been offered up the first track to be taken directly from 'Suck It And See', 'Don't Sit down 'Cos I've Moved Your Chair' and again, to me, it's nothing but impressive. It sounds bigger than I ever imagined the band could - I know 'Humbug' was a record of 80% balls out rock songs, but there's something else going on here. Lyrically it exhbits the turn of phrase I think we all went for when first hearing Alex Turner and ultimately it has all the components of a great Arctic Monkeys song. I don't know why myself and Arctic Monkeys are hanging out again, but i think the best thing to do is not think about it too much and agree to believe that it's is simply because they are and always have been, very, very good.
Record Store Day 7" released on Saturday 16th April 2011. Only available in independent record stores.
7" & 10" Formats released on Monday 30th May 2011
Artists in this article: Arctic Monkeys