Arctic Monkey’s highly-anticipated
fifth studio album ‘AM’ is scheduled for release September 9. If
you can’t wait any longer, three tracks have leaked on the
internet: “No. 1 Party Anthem,” “Knee Socks,” and “I Wanna
Be Yours.”
“No. 1 Party Anthem” is a slow,
lyrical crooner; basically everything you look for in a great Arctic
Monkeys ballad. It’s not my favourite ballad they’ve ever done
but it’s definitely a great, solid track. I’ll admit it, I wasn’t
much impressed with “Knee Socks” on first listen. There’s
nothing wrong with it, it’s a decent indie tune, but it just seems
like an average track from a band that I know can do so much more. “I
Wanna Be Yours” is the album closer and is probably by far my
favourite of the three leaked tracks. This is an adaptation of the
poem by the same name from punk poet John Cooper Clarke. Alex Turner
is at his crooning best, declaring his love on a track with a
slightly dark feel. None of the other leaked tracks gripped me in the
way this last one did.
When you couple these leaked tracks
with the three singles from this album so far: “Do I Wanna Know?”,
“R U Mine?” and “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”
then you begin to get a clearer picture of the feel of the album. So
far, the feeling I’m getting from this album is a mix of the
brooding, harder sounds of ‘Humbug’ and the crooning, slow ballads
of ‘Suck It and See.’ It seems to be a decent album overall, but
perhaps not as inventive or gripping as some of their past albums.
Of course, it’s too early to make
final judgements until I’ve heard the entire album in order, but at
the moment I much prefer the harder, more intense sound of the three
singles than I do for these leaked tracks. That being said, “I
Wanna Be Yours” is just a stunning, slow, slightly dark number that
I just can’t get enough of. I’ll be curious to see what the feel
of the album is as a whole.
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Written by - Holly Spidle