Review: Arctic Monkeys, "Suck It and See"

Suck It and See
Arctic Monkeys
Domino
06.06.11

There are two things every Britpop band has to face sooner or later: 1) the pressure of being the Next Big Thing, which is always brought on by the trend-chasing British press and its tweakeresque addiction to hype, and 2) their refusal to rock out for very long, which is the reason most Britpop bands never make it across the water.

The fact that the Arctic Monkeys were blessed/cursed with such a unique situation in 2005 -- historical, record breaking amounts of the former, and almost no problem with the latter -- went a long way towards crowning them The Best Band In The World. If you were English, that is. Having injected a little Strokes/Libertines garage energy into the Britpop formula while elevating the pub crawl to the level of angry poetry, the Monkeys were seen as the true saviors of rock, fierce postpunkers who defined the working class scrapper. This lasted for about six months.

After a solid but unsurprising followup and a third, surprising but less solid experimental album produced by Josh Homme, the Monkeys return to the throne with Suck It and See. At least it would seem that way, given its banned-in-Walmart title and first two singles, the snide "Brick By Brick" and the dark "Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair." But once you actually suck it and see, the result is a punk metajoke that would make the Sex Pistols proud:  middle-aged pop professionalism. And this in the band's mid-20s!

Having resigned themselves to giving up the mantle of Britpop's future, they've apparently decided to wander around its past. The class-war dispatches of their breakthrough, 2005's Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, are gone, replaced by a rockstar snottiness that recalls the Oasis/Blur rivalry over the mantle of 90s irony. The opening, "She's Thunderstorms," is such a perfect distillation of the form that you can sense what chords are about to land where. If you ever wondered what early solo Morrissey might sound like if he got over himself long enough to fall in love, "The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala" and "Piledriver Waltz" may offer some clues. "Library Pictures" alone comes on like the debut, then runs into an uncharacteristically dense thicket of contradicting metaphors, which bogs the very beat down; "Brick By Brick" rocks like punk never happened, complete with a notably Homme-like guitar hero solo. Even the kiss-off of "Love Is A Laserquest" (!) is tinged with age and regret.

And yet Suck It benefits somewhat from being pretty without turning mean. While lead singer/songwriter Alex Turner has left the pubs behind for the sedate life of the non-single, he hasn't forgotten his knack for the violent romantic imagery he corralled his fellow youth with in the first place; the result is a collection of anthemic, reflective love songs for street rats whose need to get off the street is overriding their natural cynicism. "One of those games you're gonna lose / But you wanna play it just in case," as he declares on "Black Treacle." Or to back up to Track 1, which offers what could be the Monkeys' new manifesto: "I've been feeling foolish / You should try it."


Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 69. They still rock more than most bands in their genre, but they're no longer surprising anyone with it.
Invention: 47. Lyrics alone, no matter how able, can't save the Monkeys from sounding like their forebears. See if someone can spot the band from across the room.
Integrity: 58. They're still the Monkeys, they're just in love. If that's something you want, here it is.