Arctic Monkeys – Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona
How can this most British of bands compete with Rihanna abroad?
Words Ben Cardew
“WHO the fuck are Arctic Monkeys?” It’s a question that’s as relevant today as it was at 2006, when the band first raised it.
In Britain, the answer seems fairly clear: the band have moved from the position of whippersnappers to elder statesmen in the space of four albums.
Abroad, they occupy a more interesting space: few acts since Blur have sounded as awkwardly British as the Monkeys, so it’s a shock to see them in a 24,000 basketball arena in Barcelona that has recently played host to Rihanna.
Maybe it shouldn’t be: on the evidence of this show, the Monkeys are now an arena band through and through, and they’re as professional as you like. The gig kicks off at breackneck pace with the glam riffing of ‘Don’t Sit Down ’Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’ and moves through a well-paced selection of frantic greatest hits (‘Brianstorm’), mass singalongs (‘The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala’) and more sedate moments (‘She’s Thunderstorms’).
There are plenty of well-timed pauses and delayed introductions for the crowd to go suitably wild and Alex Turner even has time to ask us, “Are you having a good time, Barcelona!?”
But they get away with it, because, for all their professionalism and arena style, Arctic Monkeys remain a fundamentally odd band — one that combines massive singalong melodies with bizarre, often dark, lyrical content and unlikely musical twists, much like The Smiths before them.
This hasn’t changed in the transition to arena act: instead they’ve got louder, faster and tighter, propelled by the thunderous drumming of Matt Helders, with a sound that can make basketball arenas feel almost homely.
But if there’s one reason you’re unlikely to see the Arctic Monkeys down the Bull And Gate any time soon it is the world-beating songs: how many other bands, for example, could kick off an encore with a two-song assault as devastating as ‘Suck It And See’ and ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’?
So songs, style and arena-filling class: that, in effect, is who the fuck are the Arctic Monkeys in 2012. And who would want it any other way?
