‘Dance Little Liar’: The song that brought Arctic Monkeys and Josh Homme together
“You would get backhanded compliments about it. There would be people who say, ‘I actually like that album,’” Matt Helders recalled, with a laugh, when speaking about Humbug. Because the band were under no illusions, this record was a departure from what had come before, and it was going to be the ultimate acid test for dedicated Arctic Monkeys fans.
The truth is, another album of frantic adolescent indie would likely have seen the band’s legacy retracted. They would have never become the globetrotting pioneers of modern rock we see now had Alex Turner continued on about nightclubs and Matt Helders buried himself in the ground with unrelenting fills.
But domestically, we fans were beginning to build a wall in the hopes it would keep them in our hearts. On British soil, they were becoming the band that crystallised our everyday experiences into perfect sense, and if they were to leave, who would we be left with? But the band knew better than that. They knew that for their artistry to flourish, the cobbled streets of indie Britain had to be left behind.
From the moment they laid down the demos of what would become their third album, Humbug, this inherent departure felt clear. The tempo had slowed, and the lyrics had become more abstract. But where that led them, they weren’t yet sure. Luckily for the band, fate had already presented them with the man who could eek out this innovative greatness: Josh Homme.
Elaborating, “We’d met him a couple of times and played a show together, and wondered then if he’d be up for producing us. We sort of forgot about it, but when we had about six songs together, Laurence [Bell] from our label said, ‘Would you still be interested in doing something with Josh?’ We sent him the demos, and as soon as he heard the first bit of the tune ‘Dance Little Liar’, he said, ‘You’ve got to come to the desert.'”
And to the desert they went, fully immersing themselves in Homme’s home studio setup. There, the expectations of observational lyricism and frantic compositions were stripped away. They created an album that divided their fan base, sure, but reaffirmed the strength in their own musical identity.
And with an icon like Homme at the helm, an icon who had kept the spirit of raucous guitar playing alive, they could lean into a style of musicianship that required the sort of arrogance stamped out by British audiences.
Adding, “He was really encouraging in every department, but one thing that’s really apparent is the guitars. Both him and (engineer) Alain Johannes are terrific guitarists. We’ve always been reluctant to approach guitar solos for longer than a few seconds, but they gave us the confidence to… rip it up.”
They didn’t exactly descend into ten-minute guitar solos on the album, but they did allow themselves to let loose a little bit. And in so doing, they shed a cloak of British insecurity that, after that album, never returned. While you may not hear it directly on the record, there’s no doubting that Humbug sparked a chain reaction that has now resulted in global megastardom.
