Arctic Monkeys - Belfast 16/10/23

 

Arctic Monkeys returned to Belfast on Monday night for the first time since 2009, their sound has grown up a lot in the intervening years and they may have even lost a few fans in between but the crowd in the sold out SSE Arena were there for all the music from a career that has spanned more than 20 years. Young and old(er) cheered them on to the stage accompanied by the sci-fi sounds that have infected their two most recent albums. They opened with the cinematic “Sculptures of Anything Goes” from 2022’s The Car, the music may have matured but the lyrics still paint pictures “…village coffee mornings with not long since retired spies, now that’s my idea of a good time…”. The fans in the arena belt out the next line with lead singer Alex Turner “…flash that angle grinder smile, gasp and roll your eyes…” There was a lot of eye rolling when The Monkey’s doubled down on their 2018 change of direction album – Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino then following up with a continuation in the form of The Car. These albums and supporting tours have been described as everything from Ziggy-esque to Fake Tales of San Francisco come home to roost but there is no doubt that there is still much love among those in attendance for the Arctic Monkeys of their first two albums as well. Many of those singing and dancing along with Brianstorm, Fluorescent Adolescent and Teddy Picker were very young or not even born when these songs were originally released. That’s nothing new. The Beatles, The Doors and Led Zeppelin are still music fans favourite bands, decades after they’d ended and having never had the opportunity to see them play in concert. Good music endures. My 9 year old son asked me to record 505 from the second studio album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, the last song they played live in Northern Ireland back in 2009. He’d heard it on some FIFA compilation video on Youtube. Indeed, this song may have been an indicator of a future switch of pace and works as a bridge between the first albums and the last two. By the time their third studio album, Humbug, had been released, I’d completely lost interest, though Crying Lightning sounds much better to me now than it did back then. We’re 9 songs in before we hear anything from the career launching Whatever People Say I am That’s What I’m Not. The lyrics from A View From the Afternoon perfectly captured the pre smartphone era of Nokia 3310’s “…pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock…” That technology seems ancient 20 years later. I wonder how many of the Arctic Monkeys fans who still want them to be that band would also settle for an old mobile phone.

My wife bought the 2013 album AM having heard Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? get regular airplay on the radio. I was driving her car one day and the cd came on. This was different. The band had moved to L.A. and 2 for 1’s at happy hour in a Sheffield pub had been replaced by tasting menus. The music was cool, phoning models called Arabella after hours because he'd had the matching wine with dinner, getting a cab alone to her house in the Hollywood Hills replaced trying to get 6 in a taxi to High Green via Hillsborough, takeaway food in one hand and the other one holding up a bird he’d pulled. Do I Wanna Know if this feeling flows both ways instead of "now then Mardy Bum". It was probably the drumming on R U Mine that sealed the deal for me. There was a name change as well. Did they maybe regret calling themselves Arctic Monkeys now they were this supercool, international band? AM was a new incarnation for a band giving birth to music influenced by years of working with and admiring Josh Homme and Queens Of The Stone Age while still making it sound like a brand new brand. The songs from AM make up most of the setlist and go down best with the crowd.

 It was another 5 years until the next album and it left fans gobsmacked in a good and bad way. I loved it. A younger colleague at work did not and felt he'd somehow been duped by the band he'd loved for years. I was in my early 40’s and I like my music to be more thoughtful than energetic nowadays. On monday night, we only had the title track from that album “Tranquility Base, Hotel and Casino, Mark speaking, please tell me how may I direct your call”. I’d happily pay money to see them play that whole album then come back the next night to see them do the same to The Car. Maybe they’ll do that in 30 years time in Las Vegas. They’re a long way from that physically and musically. It’s not only the music that has grown, the band has too. Turner, O'Malley, Cook, Helders and the now usual 4 touring musicians were joined by a string section for the four Belfast and Dublin shows. There’d Better Be a Mirrorball, Body Paint and I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am got the orchestral treatment as the aforementioned mirrorball exploded light above us. I Wanna Be Yours got the Star Treatment then the song most people were there for. The first time I heard I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor it was what Billy Connolly calls the “What the fuck is that?” moment he had when he heard Elvis play rock n’ roll for the first time. Luckily, I’ve had that moment a few times in my life with the music that was coming out of America in the late 80s and early 90's followed by a tsunami of great dance music but for a long time there was nothing until one day I heard this song with a lead guitar intro that you could headbang or dance to. It’s still a classic but I could happily go to a Monkeys gig and not have to hear it. Just as I could go and see Guns N’Roses and not hear Sweet Child or Red Hot Chili Peppers don’t have to play Under The Bridge in their set to make my night. What I do want to see is Matt Helders prove he is still the greatest English drummer since John Bonham. He got loose in the outro of Body Paint and tore it up on R U Mine, the final song of a night I loved every single second of. As we left the arena on a Monday night thinking about what we'd be doing now if we didn't have work to go to in the morning, mortgages to pay and an allergy to alcohol, the fans of all ages walked into town, jumped in taxi's, queued to pay for the car park and waited for their parents to pick them up, I thought back to the first time I'd seen the band live at Malahide Castle in 2007 and how much I've grown up since then, why do we expect our bands not to do the same?