The Arctic Monkeys song Matt Helders likens to “a wind up toy”
I often hear artists talking about synaesthesia: the idea of hearing sounds in the form of colours. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve screwed my eyes closed, forcing myself to try and learn that skill, but I’ve swiftly learned that it is predisposed to those whose creative ability I simply could not fathom. As a journalist, I need silly words to describe a feeling, but I never knew it would be Matt Helders who gave them to me.
Perhaps as the drummer, the creative details upon which the likes of synaesthesia and loose adjectives can hang weren’t his responsibility. Especially given that Alex Turner fills that role as one of the most abstract thinkers in popular music.
On the first two albums, his mission wasn’t to describe what the songs sounded like or what colour they were, instead his only role was to unleash fury on the rhythm section. And that he did. Like a chorus of rolling thunder he would descend upon their brand of adolescent punk rock with unyielding power, injecting some of the most chaotic fills into verse gaps, to keep not only the fans on their toes, but the rest of the band.
The result? Well, the first two albums were frantic to say the least. Whatever tempo Helders set, the remaining band would keep up, be it in their guitar melodies or in the case of Alex Turner, rapid-fire vocal deliveries–see ‘Pretty Visitors’ if you don’t believe me.
While the band have been heralded for their instrumental arrangements in their later work, what their frantic playing on their earlier work resulted in was an interesting approach to melody that allowed the band to blur the line between the nightclub and gig space.
An idea emphasised on their second record, Favourite Worst Nightmare, with the production help of James Ford. He brought his electronic background into the indie spectrum, forcing tracks like ‘Old Yellow Bricks’, ‘Teddy Picker’ and ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ to have a sort of two-step undercurrent to their profile.
And so Helders’ energy was refined, remaining frantic and violent but shapeshifting into new time signatures to create this more angular sound for the band. While synaesthetes may have described the new music with vibrant colour palettes, Helders followed his instincts and likened ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’ to a wind-up toy.
“There’s some sort of weird timing things on this one that kind of throw people off sometimes,” he told Drumeo. “Just in terms of how I’m in sync with the guitarist. I keep describing it as jerky because it sounds a bit like a wind-up toy does.”
Arbitrary as it may sound, Helders’ description has value. There’s an awkwardness to how the melody develops, with plenty of upstrokes guitar parts interrupting the jerky beat the drummer lays down throughout the song. Despite its complexity, it still manages to play like a sing-along hit, proving the brilliance of the band. Without missing a single beat, onlooking crowds can sing along to the melody and make it one of the most standout moments in the set.
