Arctic Monkeys HHV Records 10 Items

The new sensation after Oasis

New media breeds new talent – in the early 2000s, Britain’s Arctic Monkeys were among the first bands to generate hype with just a few songs on the Internet. Before the Sheffield boys even entered the studio, they already gathered crowds at their concerts, where the band released their demos on home-burned CDs – and thanks to fans, they spread like wildfire on the early Internet. In 2005, the Domino label signed them, their first number one hit I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor followed, and with their debut record Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not in 2006, the group advanced to become the next musical sensation in the UK after Oasis. With their album, which is about life in the nightclubs, the Arctic Monkeys redefined British indie and alternative music and celebrated massive success – to this day, no record has sold so many copies there so quickly, and they also earned the Mercury Music Prize for Best Album. The young indie rockers went on a world tour, and already three months later followed with the EP Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? – the band said they didn‘t feel like playing the same album numbers all the time.

Psychedelic riffs from the desert

Stimulated by the wild daily routine of their tour, the Arctic Monkeys recorded the album Favourite Worst Nightmare in 2007, which comes in a post-Britpop guise and develops the band’s sound further with rushed rhythms and heavy guitar sounds, but without imitating the previous record. They released their live show excesses as an album on At the Apollo, before suddenly taking a musical turn in 2009 with Humbug: partly recorded in the American desert landscape of Joshua Tree National Park, their indie fans suddenly had to find their way in psychedelic and hard rock realms – the 60s shimmered through. On the one hand, the album with its smoky guitar riffs sold less successfully than its two predecessors, on the other hand, the Arctic Monkeys now established themselves as the group that always wanted to break expectations. The understated cover of their next album, Suck It and See, continued this tradition they started, and the record, released in 2011, again tried its hand at different disciplines than where the band saw itself just two years earlier: while outlandish riffs and dark lyrics made their presence felt on Humbug, pop compositions dominate here, combining the psychedelic mainstream of the late ’60s with a raw indie sound. At the latest now it was clear: the Arctic Monkeys are always looking for a new narrative.

A band that can hardly disappoint any more

The band reached its temporary career peak with the record AM, released in 2013, the simple cover shows their new logo. In the UK, the vinyl became the best-selling album of the decade and was nominated for numerous music awards. All of the band’s previous influences come together here in a unique way, pairing with hip hop -inflected rhythms; frontman Turner described the new style as „a Dr. Dre beat, but we’ve given it an Ike-Turner bowl-cut and sent it galloping across the desert on a Stratocaster“. With their tale of young romance and loneliness, the band embarked on their biggest tour to date – and was forced to take a break in the aftermath, with members pursuing projects of their own. In 2017, the four then reunited for Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino , on which they undergo new artistic transformations and take us on a journey to a fictional hotel on the moon. They captured the atmosphere of the subsequent tour on the record Live at the Royal Albert Hall . With The Car , the group now continued its new musical approach and showed itself strongly inspired by David Bowie in its compositions – ultimately, the vinyl forms another multi-layered work of a band that can hardly disappoint today.