Review Summary: The Arctic monkeys aren’t far off the perfect album here. It is without question the most cohesive and obscure album they’ve ever attempted. Band chemistry is high. The band is a tad self-indulgent and long winded.
The imagery I get when I listen to Humbug is not quite right. Like a deserted circus ground at night. I don’t even see the band playing there. It’s being played just loud enough over the PA system for anyone out there to here it. This is psychedelic, a bit more abstract than Arctic Monkeys probably ever will be. In the Arctic Monkeys career arc I feel this was the album they proved to us they were a real band.
Yes it’s lustful, sleazy, brazen; but there is a certain class to this album that shows the band has matured since there debut. They have confidence to let their songs breath before making a point, and sometimes the songs just sort of go nowhere, it’s very dream like.
“You never looked like yourself from the side but your profile could not hide that you knew I was approaching your throne”
“And I elongated my lift home, yeah I let him go the long way round, smelt your scent on my seat belt, and kept my shortcuts to myself.”
"If I could be someone else for a week, I'd spend it chasing after you"
Alex Turner’s Lyrics are at their best on this album. If you read closely enough you’ll find a story in every song but good luck on piecing together a coherent meaning. What is “Crying Lightning?” We don’t care as Matt Helder stomps louder and louder on his bass drum and blasts the song into the stratosphere, out of our conscious awareness and into a heaving moshpit.
I can’t help but me reminded of Gloria by Van Morrison when listening to “Dangerous Animals.” It fits with the albums' production aesthetic and is fairly catchy. But the ideas expressed in the lyrics, the stop and stutter of the rhythm don’t really work quite as well here as on the rest of the album. One of the few hiccups on Humbug.
The dirty Jagged riff in "Potion Approaching" makes me want to cast spells like Severus Snape. Yep the band are graduating from that circus ground I mentioned earlier. They are now at some sort of fancy dress party. Everyone is masked. Guests of the party may as well be demons with nefarious intentions. But never fear the track is a twisted love song and there are a few guests at the party that will get together and do the deed right.
I feel like the band are playing cat and mouse with listener on the album. Giving us a catchy hook here, a memorable lyric there:- but it’s all a tease. What’s really going on here? “The Fire and Thud” is a rather chill number, a welcome breath after some intense moments earlier in the album. Ghosts, the back up vocals sound like ghosts howling. Not howling to be scary or to be anything at all they are just there behind the scenes. And just as we’ve caught our breath in we go again, there’s female back up vocals, the drums get louder, and wooaah there Lassie then the tempo slows down like an Elephant transitioning from a gallop to a trot.
And then the saviour of the album. Cornerstone. The feel good fuzzy moment that reminds us that Alex Turner will forever have an aching heart. This song is elegant. It doesn’t go over the top with anything and the lyrics unfold their story. I don’t know where the Parrot’s Beak is or what Lettraset is. But it doesn’t matter. I get it. Check out the Wind Cries Mary-like guitar solo in it. Backwards guitars!!! Get out of here that’s cool. I must’ve spun the album 30 or more times and that’s the first time I picked up that similarity.
The beginning of the twang in the riff in the “The Jeweller's Hands” sounds like what the Iron Giant would play if he fashioned his own guitar out of power lines. I visualize a wide pan scene with his silhouette, the moon and a whale’s deep call gracefully answering the big man. Matt Helder's simple yet ingenious beat takes the song to another level. And then again we get another glorious jam to finish the song off.
I'd recommend Humbug as a starting point for people more into heavier music who may have been skeptical of the bands' debut; perhaps because of the enormous amount of hype surrounding it at the time. It's a stretch for me to call this their "best album" but it is definitely their bravest. I'd love to hear The Arctic Monkeys take a risk like this on their next album.
