Arctic Monkeys’ debut album alone could well stand against anyone questioning their meteoric rise to success and the incessive hype that surrounded them I still think it is Old Yellow Bricks from Your Favourite Worst Nightmare that cements Alex Turner’s position as one of the key new British songwriters of the 00′s. Though co-written by Jon McLure of Reverend And The Makers and featuring some of the other band members’ most stylized and minute instrumentation to date, you’ve got to hand it to Turner that it’s a brilliant pop song that stands as one of Arctic Monkeys’ most accessible and cathartic. Props also to producer James Ford who helped the Monkeys steer into a more modern, contemporary dance-punk approach which suits Old Yellow Bricks perfectly.
The lyrics is a stab at the pointlessness of nostalgia and the paralyzing effects of it. You can see Turner sneering as he sings: ”You are the fugitive but you don’t know what you’re running away from” to the sinister, highly danceable beat of the band. The riff may be the ear-catcher but the real perfomance is Matt Helder’s expert drumming. Quite unexpectedly the band drops down a notch for the chorus, to just the thump of the bass drum and some shamelessly elegant guitar chords as the band goes: ”Who wants to sleep in a city that never wakes up? / Blinded by nostalgia”. The arrangement is insanely catchy and as good-looking as any music can sound.
It’s somewhat ironic that before and after the album that features Old Yellow Bricks, Arctic Monkeys have had traces of the rock’n'roll past echoing inside their sound, yet still with Turner’s songwriting talent always translating their influences into something that sounds purely their own. So while I retain that choosing to see Parker Lewis instead of Arctic Monkeys playing the same night at Cirkus in Stockholm was the right decision, I still would’ve wanted to dance along to Old Yellow Bricks. Certainly not overlooking the band’s vast catalogue of gems, it stills consoles me a little that it wouldn’t have mattered, since a friend of mine who was there told me that they didn’t play it.
Listen to Old Yellow Bricks on Spotify!
Or watch the youtube video below!
