Humbug [Digipak]

Performer: Arctic Monkeys
Engineer: Claudius Mittendorfer; Alain Johannes
Producer: James Ford; Joshua Homme
Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Notes: Personnel: Alison Mosshart (vocals); John Ashton (keyboards, background vocals). Audio Mixer: Rich Costey. Recording information: Mission Sound, Brooklyn, NY; Pink Duck Studios; Rancho de La Luna. Photographers: Mark Bull; Justin Smith; Guy Aroch; Chapman Baehler; Justin Smith ; Chapman Baehler; Guy Aroch. Facing the third album blues, the Arctic Monkeys turned to Josh Homme, the Queens of the Stone Age mastermind renowned for his collaborations but heretofore untested as a producer. On first glance, it's a peculiar pair--the heirs of Paul Weller meet the heavy desert mystic--but this isn't a team of equals, it's a big brother helping his little siblings go wayward and get weird. Homme doesn't imprint his own views on the Monkeys but encourages them to follow their strange instincts. Wading into the murk of HUMBUG it becomes clear that the common ground between the Monkeys and Homme is the actual act of making music, the pleasure of not knowing what comes next when an entire band is drifting inside a zone. Since so much of HUMBUG is about its process, it's not always immediately accessible or pleasurable to an outside listener, nor is it quite the thickly colored freakout Homme's presence suggests. The Monkeys still favor angular riffs and clenched rhythms, constructing tightly framed vignettes not widescreen epics, but they're working with a darker palette and creating vaguely abstract compositions, sensibilities that extend to Alex Turner's words too, as he trades keen detail for vivid scrawled impressions. Every element of the album reflects a band testing its limits, seeing where they could go next.

Entertainment Weekly (p.62) - "[They] continue to churn out spiky Britpop anthems, though they take a (relative) turn for the deeper and darker here." -- Grade: B+ Billboard - "The Monkeys still favor angular riffs and clenched rhythms, constructing tightly framed vignettes not widescreen epics, but they're working with a darker palette and creating vaguely abstract compositions..." Paste (magazine) (p.51) - "Arctic Monkeys collect their darkest impulses and put them on stark display; it's another massive step forward in a career that seems marked for greatness." Pitchfork (Website) - "It's their loosest record yet by far....The guitars in particular have a snapping, reverberant desert/surf tone that fuels the band's descent into night." Record Collector (magazine) (p.80) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Turner can floor with his wordplay....Plus the chops, particularly of drummer Matt Helders, who does well not to buckle under Homme's glare, are, frankly, amazing throughout."

The U.K. music scene is notorious for launching previously unknown bands to the heights of stardom on word-of-mouth gossip and music-press hype alone. Arctic Monkeys took that phenomenon to an entirely new level when they sold 110,000 copies of their 2005 debut LP, WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM, THAT'S WHAT I'M NOT, in the first two days of its release. An undeniably accessible (and bankable) mix of Brit Pop, U.K. punk, and hip-hop swagger has led fans and critics to dub them the next Oasis.

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