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Alex Turner: Maturation or Disaffection?
Indie | Wednesday 9th October 2013 | Alex
Arctic Monkeys new album dropped earlier this month, and since then it has drawn plaudits from all corners. It represents a clear turning point in their sound where they can, now, go anywhere they so desire. However, there’s one thing that’s been eating away at me like an ancient form of water torture drip, drip, drip: Alex Turner not knowing when enough pronouns are enough.
Now let’s be fair, first and foremost. These guys are great. The hordes of “lad rock” fans that formed as condensation does on a warm window when Oasis’ Romanesque fall came to pass could be overlooked. I even turned a blind eye to Alex Turner letting Alexa Chung slip through his fingers, bad move that. Having said all of the above, this overly liberal use of personal pronouns on their latest album is madness.
The first three singles to be released from their 5th album have all contained some form of pronoun; “R U Mine?”, “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”, with “Do I Wanna Know?” completing this holy trinity. You’ll be wondering why this irks me so, well, I’m going to tell you.
Alex Turner’s wordmanship has been firmly based in human interaction. He has this ability to take a situation that we’ve all been in and craft it into this being that stays in your head for days on end, so it is natural that his lyrics would reflect a more cognitive romanticism (you can’t always right about taxis and chippies). Personally, I think he reached his pinnacle in this department with “Do Me A Favour”, but that’s entirely up for debate, of course.
What irks me enough to want to speak about this is that Turner managed to convey this without the need to say you, I, me, my, something, something, something etc. so often. I’m not sure if his status as 50’s style Greaser-Jesus has distanced him from being able to connect with his audience in that niche market that they so monopolized or if it’s as simple as a genuine maturation of their sound.
Either way, a more introspective style of writing these days doesn’t affect record sales (and why should it, they’re Arctic-fucking-Monkeys-mate) but it slightly feels that they’re drifting further and further from those crucibles and sandstone pubs that set these guys up with the wit to last.
Alex Taylor.
