The most popular export from Sheffield, since cutlery, return with their eagerly awaited follow up to the million selling debut album that blew away all the competition on its release.
‘Favourite Worst Nightmare’ kicks off with the taught, muscular, first single “Brianstorm”. The tension that builds with the intense drumming continues with the reverb laden, gloomy “Teddy Picker”, and the guitar workout of “D Is For Dangerous”.
With only two songs clocking in at over 4 minutes long on the entire twelve-track album, the first half of ‘FWN’ burns past you in a rush of modern poetic verse and excellent drumming. More mature in musical ability and song structure than its predecessor, ‘FWN’ only pauses to catch its breath at track 5 with “Fluorescent Adolescent”. Sadly the lyrics to this song are in a similar vein to the title, but they are still far superior to the cringe-worthy lyrics of contemporaries Little Man Tate and Milburn.
“Only Ones Who Know” is a slow strummed guitar/cello track, in complete contrast to “Fluorescent…”, with touching sensitive lyrics fitting perfectly with the emotive music. “Do Me A Favour” begins to take the pace back up, a mid tempo pop song with a catchy guitar line.
The most notable change since their debut is the improvement of the rhythm section, as ever the songs are catchy and will prove addictive to the Arctic’s fan base, but gone are the jerky elements replaced with pounding bass lines and the fantastic muscular drumming of Matt Helders.
“If You Were There, Beware” is a fine example of the growth of the band since they were catapulted to the spotlight. It starts with a trademark riff but then drops out and becomes haunting and relies largely on very simple understated guitar parts {like the majority of the slower parts of ‘FWN’} before kicking off into a heavy distorted guitar cycle as first showcased with “Brianstorm”.
Favourite Worst Nightmare is not perfect but the development the Arctic Monkeys have shown within just two records points to a band that can truly go on to create something that can be held up against classic British bands. For more information you can visit: http://www.arcticmonkeys.com
