ARCTIC MONKEYS

By Sarah Perez

From The Beginning

Arctic Monkeys are an English indie rock band. The current members of the group are Alex Turner, Jamie Cook, Nick O’Malley and Matt Helders. Past members of the group were Andy Nicholson and Glyn Jones. They played their first gig on 13 June 2003. After a few performance they began to record demos at 2Fly studios.

The band began to grow in popularity across the north of England, receiving attention from BBC Radio and the British tabloid press. A local amateur photographer, Mark Bull, filmed the band's performances and made the music video “Fake Tales of San Francisco", releasing it on his website.

The band have released four studio albums: Whatever People Say I am, That's What I'm Not(2006), Favourite Worst Nightmare (2007), Humbug (2009) and Suck It and See(2011), as well as one live album At the Apollo (2008). The band's debut album became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history.

Style

The band's music is known mostly as indie rock although they have changed their genre of rock on each album, which is one of the bands key features. The band have expanded and altered their sound with each of their four albums making it difficult to pin a specific description to their style. The key part of their sound and one that comes across their whole discography is lead singer Alex Turner's intricate and often rapidly-delivered lyrics, sung in a distinctive strong Yorkshire accent that their music became famed for in their early years.

When The Sun Goes Down (2006)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqkBRVukQmE The video was directed by Paul Fraser The band does not appear in the video, but the story is being

told by the main vocalist, Alex Turner. As the music speeds up so does the footage. The song

changes drastically into a heavy rock style. The song lyrics and the music video tells a story. The music video used footage from a short film, Scummy

Man, which used the same actors who appeared in the music video to tell the story of 'Nina‘ a 15 year old drug addict who works as a prostitute in Sheffield. The ‘scummy man’ is implied to be either the prostitute's pimp or a 'client' who is picking her up for sex.

Fluorescent Adolescent (2007)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma9I9VBKPiw

The song describes a woman who dreams of her youth while her current life is unsatisfying and boring.

The music video was directed by Richard Ayoade and features the actor Stephen Graham who previously appeared in ‘When The Sun Goes Down’.

The music video is based around a fight between a group of clowns and a group of non-clowns at an abandoned warehouse. The presumed leaders of the two groups have a flashback showing that they were friends when they were young children. During the flashback, photos of the band as young children are shown. Throughout the fight, each group leader attempts to kill the other. As the music video climaxes, the non-clown leader tries to run over the clown leader.

The music video is loosely inspired by the poem "Out of Control Circus" by John Cooper Clarke. Alex Turner says he's a fan and gets lyrical inspiration from John Clarke. The poem is also printed inside the CD release of "Fluorescent Adolescent."