Everything’s in order in a black hole

Fluorescent Adolescent – Arctic Monkeys

The busy part of my summer is finally over. I saw my visiting friends out of town (one to fly back to Boise, another hiking north on the Appalachian Trail), and now fully intend to settle into a routine of research for the upcoming year, punctuated by the occasional break for blogging and other entertainment essentials.

Speaking of which, tomorrow is the first day of the English Premier League. This year will be the first that I’ll be closely following the season from start to finish so I’m quite excited at the prospect of new matches to watch especially now that I’ve got a sweet Setanta setup right at the desk in my office.

My other big project is some serious summer cleaning. The house is a mess and needs a serious going through. Along those lines, I’ve decided to devote the next week or so here to some summer music-cleaning – going through all those records I meant to discuss months ago but never quite got around to.

First on the list is the new record from the Arctic Monkeys. Do these energetic, bizarrely-named Brits suffer from the sophomore slump on Favourite Worst Nightmare? Like many of the anticipated releases from this year (see: Arcade Fire, Bright Eyes, Shins, Stars, etc.), it’s difficult to say. I can say for sure that it doesn’t have the frenetic energy or the gritty sneer of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, but that alone shouldn’t be a deciding factor.

If it’s less gripping, it may make up the difference in nuance. Certainly, a song like “Fluorescent Adolescent” would have felt out of place elsewhere, but it may be the single best song they’ve yet produced.

Still, it’s no surprise that I haven’t felt the manic urge to play this disc nearly as often as their first. It may be more melodic, but Sinatra it ain’t. These are still the same blokes who ground out the pulsing beats of “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” and while their adventurous efforts to expand their sound are admirable, I’m not sure they’ve quite got the chops to hold it all together quite yet.

The result is a record that I enjoy quite a bit, and one that holds out promise of a band capable of producing some great ones in the future, but which is not a classic in its own right.

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