Yes, it’s brilliant. Musically more muscular, full of the same unparalleled lyrical flair that so characterised their debut, seemingly unburdened by the ridiculous expectation placed upon its creators. Make no mistake, from the titanic drum rolls of first single ‘Brianstorm’, to ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’’s almost frighteningly spot-on documentation of a fading, sexless relationship (‘You used to get it in your fishnets/Now you only get it in your nightdress/Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness/Landed in a very common crisis’), to the beautiful Smithsian balladry of ‘Only Ones Who Know’, to the heavy, funk-infused ‘Old Yellow Bricks’, Arctic Monkeys have made a consistently exciting and varied sophomore record. Faultless, even.
And yet, in the context of those hundreds of magazine articles proclaiming them to be ‘spokesmen for a generation’ and Britain’s desperate, desperate longing for another band that can lead us – as Oasis seemed to do so effortlessly for a couple of years – to a better place, that somehow doesn’t feel like enough. Of course it should be. The way that Alex Turner spits, ‘Perhaps, “Fuck off!” might be too kind!’ in ‘The Backseat Dumper’, the way the guitars chime in ‘Do Me A Favour’, the atmospherics that decorate the astonishing closer ‘505’… taken at face value, ‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ is, as relentlessly advertised, the work of a truly great band. But it’s also one made by reluctant revolutionaries, by young men who have no desire to rock the planet on its axis, yet who the world – or at least the music press – is shoving onto a pedestal that they don’t want, or need, to climb. It is an excellent album, nothing more.
There are no champagne supernovas here, nor in the future are there likely to be any ‘what-the-fuck-was-that-all-about?’ marriages or ‘Be Here Now’-style excesses. There seems every possibility that this very special group will go on to make five – or even 10 – more records as strong as this one. Until everyone calms down, though, and through absolutely no fault of their own, Arctic Monkeys will, despite comprehensively dwarfing every other mainstream guitar band in Britain, continue to feel underwhelming. And that, for us as much as them, really is a ‘…Nightmare’.
