“It makes it extra exciting”: The moment you know Arctic Monkeys have enjoyed their set
The Arctic Monkeys are modern indie rock stalwarts, which more often than not is a pretty straight-laced affair. It’s all about massive guitar riffs, blazing lyrics, and frequently a heavy dose of bravado to boot, which the band possess by the bucketload. But when you throw frontman Alex Turner in the mix, whose artistic pretences and prophetic poetics sometimes threaten to diminish the unbridled laddish image in which he made his name, a much more diverse spectrum of sonics began to emerge.
Indeed, whatever they started with on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not in 2006 was largely unrecognisable by the time they reached their most recent effort, The Car, in 2022 – but this is not to say that everything has been lost to the wayside in the process. 2013’s AM represented a particular high point, with the band stoking up the critical sonic rapture that they brought about some years prior with their debut album, and suddenly, the Arctic Monkeys were the pinnacle of the indie rock world.
With this came the facets of each rocker’s dream – a sea of awards, hoards of headline shows, and the realisation that you were now the heroes that every young wannabe kid looked up to in awe. That would be intoxicating for anyone, but not least Turner, whose proclivities for fame were freely allowed to relish in all their glory in that moment. Naturally, he started to take advantage of this rapture whenever the Arctic Monkeys hit the stage, leading to a particularly memorable moment which changed the band’s live performing trajectory, according to drummer Matt Helders.
“We always ended the whole set with ‘R U Mine?’,” recalled Helders, explaining his drumming technique for the song. “There was a time – the first time this happened – where it just became a tradition, that Alex ended it as it ends, and then he re-sings the ‘Silver Linings’ part when there’s a gap and there’s just vocals.” As much as it seemed spontaneous in the moment, the rest of the band had no idea what Turner’s last-minute added encore would entail, and the way it would alter the rest of their performances going forward.
“We’d already got up and started to walk off when he went back to the front of the stage and started singing,” said Helders. “We were looking at each other like, ‘Is he just doing this as a little thing, or does he expect us to do the outro again?’ Now we know, depending on what mood he’s in, whether he’s gonna do it or not, but that first one was the real, organic time. It just makes it feel that it must have been a good show if he wants to do the outro again, and it makes it extra exciting.”
Creating this additional layer of speculation and anticipation at the conclusion of the Arctic Monkeys’ shows was hardly going to make them more successful than they already were, but it certainly heightens the status and persona that Turner attempts to foster in everything he publicly does. This is a frontman who truly revels in his fans’ adoration, and whatever you make of him for it, no one can deny that he stops at nothing to deliver a proper show.
Changing a setlist may not be the most revolutionary of alterations that a band can make to their perception, but it certainly has a seismic effect on the fans’ final memories of any particular gig, whether you go out with a bang or a mere whimper. The Arctic Monkeys have definitely never gone down the latter route – but if there’s anything that Turner proves, his version of going out with a bang will grow and grow until it explodes.
