Arctic Monkeys - Alexandra Palace 9/12/07

I was one of 8000 people lucky enough to get a ticket for the second show of Arctic Monkeys' two-night stint at Alexandra Palace on the Sunday night. Sunday night gigs are always slightly strange affairs, as there is that haze of imminent toil hovering above the heads of the punters.

Yet being an Arctic Monkeys gig there were also lots of excitable kids, as well as the mandatory crowd of ‘geezas' who insist on constantly pushing through the crowd during key songs to go to the bar. Curiously, they then spend the rest of the time doing one of two things: throwing most of the beer they've bought over the rest of the crowd; and almost drowning out what comes over the PA by replicating any key melodies - normally guitar lines - in that football hooligans' voice you normally only hear in the terraces, or at Fratellis gigs.

Let's have a quick retrospective on what Arctic Monkeys have achieved to date. In just over two years the band have released two fantastic Top Ten albums ('Whatever People Say I Am, that's what I'm Not' and 'Favourite Worst Nightmare'), three EPs ('Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys?', 'Leave Before the Lights Come On' and 'Beneath the Boardwalk'), plus lots of other singles with b-sides, many of which were also classed as EPs on the technicality of having four tracks (or more). They have headlined Glastonbury, put on their own mini festival at Lancashire Cricket Ground, and have toured the world in the meantime. I read this morning that they soon want to start releasing new material as they record it, perhaps through a brace of stand-alone singles rather than LPs. They were slightly miffed apparently when they missed (by three months) their target of releasing their second album exactly one year after their first. They did some recording with Dizzee Rascal, which yielded two versions of the raunchy 'Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend': one for Dizzee's (excellent) album 'Maths and English' and one for the Monkeys' b-side to the 'Brianstorm' single. Alex Turner has even found time to work on a side project with his friend Miles Kane (from the Rascals, who were supporting) and FWN's producer James Ford. So the one thing this band are - if nothing else - is prolific, with a release schedule almost rivalling the Beatles.

So, at their show, this prolificacy and wish to do everything at once at breakneck speed with the energy that only 21 year-old boys can have, was reflected in the long set list:

Sandtrap
This House is a Circus
Teddy Picker
I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor
Dancing Shoes
From the Ritz to the Rubble
Fake Tales of San Francisco
Balaclava
Old Yellow Bricks
Put Me in a Terror Pocket
When the Sun Goes Down
D is for Dangerous
Leave Before the Lights Come On
Fluorescent Adolescent
Da Frame 2R
Plastic Tramp
Still Take you Home
Do Me a Favour
Brianstorm

Nettles
the View from the Afternoon
If You were There, Beware

They weren't as tight as they are normally because Alex Turner was pretty drunk towards the end of the show and slurring his banter with the audience. They didn't play arguably three of their best songs: 'A Certain Romance', 'Mardy Bum', and '505', despite the organ being set up for the latter. The setlist seemed a bit muddled and they finished with 'If You Were There, Beware' - their great prog-rock odyssey - but certainly not a closer. They played two b-sides and two new songs, one of which, 'Sandtrap', they opened with. I'm not particularly going to comment on the newbies as I don't want to do them a disservice only having heard them once. All I will say is they were dark and hard-sounding, with complex guitar playing and melodies. And pretty good.

However, as my friend aptly put it, the band scored 7/10 for performance but 10/10 for enjoyment, as they are an excellent band whose good-but-not-great shows will eclipse most bands' best ever gigs. Alex did seem a little subdued, although it has been noted that the Monkeys aren't big fans of London crowds. In fact at one point he remarked that there was "such little noise for such a big room". The Rascals' Miles Kane came on to play b-side 'Plastic Tramp', wielding a beautiful turquoise Telecaster with some sort of chunky-looking custom pickup and a massive Bigsby whammy bar. There was a running joke about chocolate, which, as far as I could tell, was what Alex was throwing out to the audience, perhaps to placate them. Other than a few other funny observations from Turner ("there's this little sachet of space down the front") there wasn't much else to report about the performance side of things. All four Monkeys looked quite tired, and Alex looked reasonable bored in places. Some songs were pretty loose ('Still Take You Home'), others supremely tight ('Brianstorm'), some too slow ('Fluorescent Adolescent'), and some were sloppy but then came good, like 'Old Yellow Bricks', which just started on the bass, as I suspect Alex wasn't quite ready to start with his guitar part thanks to the contents of his plastic pint glass. As I said though, it was a good show purely because the Arctic Monkeys were on that stage playing great songs with great parts. Certainly the rhythm section of the brilliant Nick O'Malley and Matt Helders were as tight as a well-run ship. The lights were nothing spectacular, but that sense of unfussiness is something that appeals most about Arctic Monkeys, as the songs do all the talking. It was a shame that they ended on the cryptic If You Were There Beware, a fact I think the band were all too aware of as Alex disclaimed "This is absolutely the last song ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming" as if people wouldn't believe him and would still be waiting for the usual set-closer of 'A Certain 'Romance. Quite the opposite: people actually started to leave during this song, and in large numbers too, and this slightly spoilt the end of the gig as it felt like a real non-event. Additionally I was envious of the previous night's crowd, as they did hear the afore-mentioned 'Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend', which also saw Dizzee Rascal joining the band onstage to rap his part of the song. However, for the most part the band focussed on playing well, and with a full sound; a result of all the new additions to their setup since the touring commitments of their debut album.

The Arctic Monkeys sound has progressed massively since I last saw them, which was at the SXSW festival in Texas in March 2006. It's anyone's guess what made the Monkeys explore their new surf-rock sound, but I'd say 'Favourite Worst Nightmare's producer James Ford had a lot to do with it. He plays the dreamy lapsteel guitar on 'Only Ones Who Know' and is the brains behind such innovations as the Mercury-winning Klaxons album 'Myths of the Near Future', the eclectic Mystery Jets' album 'Making Dens', and is one half of the proto-electro dance project Simian Mobile Disco. The debauched guitar solo that Alex plays on 'Teddy Picker' is a prime example of this surf sound. Another contributor is the chorus pedal, set at a fast rate, that guitarist Jamie Cool uses for lots of the songs from 'Favourite Worst Nightmare': on the fanned chords of '505', and complementary two-note chords of 'Do Me a Favour' (my personal favourite Monkeys song). Cook has also ditched his signature red Telecaster for his stately cherry red Epiphone ES-175. He still goes through HiWatt amps. Alex Turner has replaced the white American standard Strat for the pretty rare black Fender Bronco. These were made by Fender from 1967 to 1980, and were intended to be a budget ‘student' model of the Fender Mustang. However the Bronco is shorter in scale than the Mustang, and was allegedly designed for guitarists with smaller hands. This might be a reason the fairly diminutive Tuner uses it. It also only has one (bridge) pickup, and has a very bright and jagged sound. Turner's setup has changed the most, for as well as now playing the Vox Supercontinental II organ, he runs his guitar through a line splitter that runs his Bronco between a Fender Twin and a Bad Cat amp, the latter was previously unknown to me but it looks pretty cool and sounds amazing. Turner also uses a beautiful black and white Gretch SpectraSonic on 'If You Were There Beware', presumably for the Bigsby tremolo arm. The coolest guitar on the rack though is Turner's red Martin F-65, which Miles Kane normally uses when he guests on '505', but tonight Turner used it for - I think - new song 'Nettles'.

As always with this band, I am one of millions of people who are totally intrigued to see what Arctic Monkeys come up with next. For a band that have achieved so much, as well as throwing in such curveballs as playing Jonathan Ross dressed as clowns and shunning TV appearances and award ceremonies, it could be pretty well anything they please.

Photo acknowledgments go to Nettie of the very informative website 'mycoldplay.com' (featuring many bands other than Chris Martin n co).