The 10 best Arctic Monkeys B-sides and rarities ranked
The Arctic Monkeys might have been dubbed the first internet band, but someone ought to call 999 because alt-J have been robbed. Given that Alex Turner adheres to near-Amish technological standards, the tagline proves to be the musical misnomer of the century. In truth, the Sheffield scallies have actually done more for the physical format than any other big act in present times owing to their evergreen insistence on offering up a slew of scintillating B-sides with every single.
Like Bob Dylan of old, the Monkeys are more than happy to lift the curtain to their creative process for any fans who care to take a look. Sometimes this can lead to dog dirt like the appalling ‘2013’ which, by rights, should’ve been shot at birth, but aside from that blemish, most of the rarities they have offered up are album-quality tracks.
Below we’ve collated these lesser-known ditties, ranked them in order of great to greatest, and wrapped them all up in a playlist to boot. Sadly, masterful offerings like ‘Anyways’, ‘Don’t Forget Whose Legs You’re On’ and the oddly prescient ‘Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?’ have had to miss out, but that’s just a sign of how good their flip sides always prove to be. Enjoy…
Arctic Monkeys 10 best B-sides:
10. ‘Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts’
There is something very sweet about the coarse teenage discourse of ‘Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts’. Now, the swaggering 1970s-styled Turner – with his goatee, penchant for David Foster Wallace novels, and general inverse credo to a Vauxhall Nova – would likely cringe so hard at the old anthem that his chiselled jaw would be in danger of snapping.
However, for most of us, that is the beauty of it. This track identifies the slack school tie days with an air of such fidelity that you wonder whether your diary was somehow leaked onto MySpace, and Turner transposed it into a song. This encapsulation comes with a poetic edge and that collision hints at the sagacious wit that would mature beyond this juvenile tale. It’s undeniably youthful, but that’s the beauty of the Monkeys—there is never any pretence beyond following the whims of their muse and often preserving the zeitgeist in amber as they do so.
9. ‘Sketchead’
Matt Helders is one of the finest drummers of his generation and ‘Sketchead’ is his opus. The agile beast thrashes about like a human octopus with a PhD in rhythm. Punching the kit harder than a policeman’s knock, the sticksmith still somehow graces the thunder with the tempered touch of groove.
Then layered over this crash, bang, wallop of rafter rattling fills is the tale of a man akin to the fabled protagonist in Nick Cave’s ‘Red Right Hand’. Who is this mystical arsehole and what kind of creature bore him? We don’t know, but Turner paints a picture that turns out all shades of stormy.
8. ‘Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend’
The B-side is an arena that allows for some fun and exploration; this is why more bands should follow Arctic Monkeys’ lead and put the effort in to plodge into the liberated creative terrain on the other side of a single. The group have always had a bent towards beats and for this old classic, the ‘band guys’ went down the rap route with Dizzee Rascal and served up an adrenalised frenzy of fun.
Now, it might not hold up as their most timelessly cool effort, but there also isn’t much like it out there in the annals of music history and that will always be creditable. Alas, with enough energy in it to power their Humbug era hairdryer, it’s also still a bit of a thrill to blast out as musical replacement coffee.
7. ‘No Buses’
This old ditty draws a long-cast shadow and croons ‘come shelter in me for a while’. Free from the gaudy glare of frenzied rock, this mellowed anthem typifies the fact that their back catalogue has always been brimming with light and shade, rolling thunder and serene breezes. The penumbra province of this sullen softy offered up warm comfort during quiet moments to many a doleful delinquent back in the day, and no doubt it still does for those fresh faces edging their way into the depths of the Monkeys’ dirty back catalogue.
Once more, it’s joyously juvenile, but that gives it a solid dose of realism. Therein, you can find your own personal corroborations in the obfuscated lyrics. I, for one, always felt this track somehow wove my own personal experiences into the welter of the back-page-of-a-notebook poetry that Turner croaks out in a high school Casanova style.
6. ‘The Afternoon’s Hat’
The ‘My Propeller’ EP was a belter, chocked with a string of classics. However, it seemed pertinent to crown only one of them as champion and ‘The Afternoon’s Hat’ gets the nod from me. The brilliance of the EP is symptomatic of the purple patch that the band found themselves in during Humbug—it might have seemed like a divergence, but they were so prolific in the desert rock area that you half wonder whether it’s somehow their natural habitat.
In this sandy home away from Sheffield, the scallies crafted plashy basslines that build towards rapt crescendos. Similar to the eternally underrated ‘Dance Little Liar’ the contours of the song are perfectly crafted, and the grand arrangement is a force to behold. It slowly lures you into its sultry snare like a boa constrictor tightening a sonic lasso.
5. ‘Despair in the Departure Lounge’
Albert Hammond Jr. once opined that this was his favourite sad song. The Strokes guitarist explained, “I think it’s just one that I listened to a lot when I was sad. Sometimes you just find songs that when you put on repeat – y’know in New York you just walk around listening on headphones, to make you feel better, you just don’t want the song to end. There’s something about that song, that’s just…I don’t know, I listened to way too many times! A hundred times in a row.”
That’s high praise indeed for this old classic. It’s now almost strangely iconic as a sort of touchstone to the early days of the band. It also foreshadowed a lot about what was to come (right down to Turner’s penchant for oddly specific TV references). It’s not their finest, but it’s so sweetly sincere that you simply can’t begrudge it.
4. ‘Cigarette Smoker Fiona’
It’s another anthem that Turner and the gang might not be too fond of these days, but for the rest of us, it’s a time capsule to the precession of youth. Why wouldn’t you believe the hype back then when this was a mere B-side? They were the band who could effortlessly craft the ‘bangers’ and to hell with any naysayers who were forcing themselves to look sulky in the indie club.
Its success is all in the tight indie arrangement. After all, the band are great mates, and that camaraderie is palpable in the rhythmic alchemy of the songs where each part tessellates with the ease of old pal patter. Moreover, that little amp fade part at 02:19 still gets me clenching an involuntary fist of appreciation. A frenzied beast of adolescent beauty.
3. ‘Blond-O-Sonic Shimmer Trap’
Lord knows what rig the guitars were running down with this anthem but the effervescing fuzz it creates is enough to make your hair stand up with joyous static energy. This groovy sound mingles magically with perfectly crisp wordplay like the brilliant “time tastes bland when she’s not around” and “if you were heat-seeking she was hard to ignore”.
Furthermore, the production goes above and beyond what you’d expect for a B-side—the layered vocals are perfectly painted to create a textured topline melody. The songcraft is also fine-tuned—punchy notes like a stinging B-flat come at just the right time to punctuate the trance-inducing repetition of the slinky riff, all coming together to create a vibe-highway you’ll frequently cruise along.
2. ‘Catapult’
Is the same mystic creature from ‘Sketchead’ making a return or is this his refined older brother? Whoever he is, he’s a force to behold and makes you quiver like a greasy goon with less crack than a day-old popadom and charisma about as convincing as a Prince Andrew interview. Swirling around this urban demigod is a fluttering guitar paroxysm and a stepping rhythm section that waltzes you over to the booths of the bar with the leer of a captivating come hither akin to a curious old candy store to a chubby kid.
Turner’s poetry and the pitch-perfect arrangement shake hands like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch and Carl Weathers’ Dillon in Predator. It’s a powerful combination that somehow proves visceral and yet joyously veiled, rapturously rollicking yet titillatingly thoughtful. It’s desert rock down to the wavering shadows in the night, but the soot-covered sonnets of Baudelaire somehow bake themselves out on the searing melody whisking up a miasmatical mirage of mystery.
1. ‘Evil Twin’
You could strike a match on the riff that ‘Evil Twin’ offers up in a forceful Tony Yeboahesque volley, and slice through nails with the cutting verses slapped down atop of it. Yes, your denim jacket did have sleeves still firmly intact before you pressed play, and your motorbike license wasn’t even a pipedream when you were watching Easy Rider, but rock ‘n’ roll changes people, and the swagger of this slicked-back and greased track is as contagious as an inverse yawn.
What’s more, it’s also a paradigm of the why Arctic Monkeys are modern masters of the B-side. They give them more creative consideration than many apply to their albums. The A-side single, ‘Suck it and See’, is a tender ballad with quirky, heartfelt couplets like “You’re rarer than a can of Dandelion and Burdock / And those other girls are just post-mix lemonade,” while ‘Evil Twin’ explores the other side of love’s coin. And they even carried this innovative B-side embracing onto the music video.
