A VVIBE: Arctic Monkeys live

I was thinking about it yesterday and I really wish I could see them live again. The way Alex Turner writes lyrics, it just charms me, because it’s so easy to feel them under your skin. I feel like the lyrics to Alex’s love songs melt in your mouth like chocolate when you sing them, they feel so good on your tongue. Actually, Alex’s songs, in general, feel good in the mouth, all of them, there’s a sensation that accompanies his lyrics that I can’t describe, it’s like saying the right thing at the right time maybe? Anyway, it feels good in your ears, when you hum them under your breath, and even better when you scream them in a crowd at the top of your lungs.

And I feel like they are personal to him, they are far from vague but in the vaguest way possible if that makes any sense. It’s like he knows how to talk about things in a way that’s vague enough to resonate with other people, yet the details he gives us are sometimes so specific that you can’t help but feel like this was part of his life? I was talking to a friend about it and it’s a little cringy when you think about the songs because of this, but when you are actually listening to them, it’s a completely different feeling.

Suck it and See is personally my favorite album by them, the second half is raw in a way that truly describes what heartbreak feels like and I just vvibe deeply with it. It also talks about love in a way that really pleases me, it feels real. From falling in love to falling apart, it’s a journey that I feel like Alex just knows too well, actually, I know he does because he writes about it in a way that only people who have truly been to heaven and hell know how.

That’s why I think an Arctic Monkeys concert is so personal, take The Killers for an example, their concert is a divine experience, it feels like your upper body is radiating light, to me most of the songs feel like a connection with God and divine energy that Brandon knows how to put in his songs, but in an Arctic Monkeys concert everybody sings 505 to a different person, everybody screams “I crumble completely when you cry” for a personal and particular reason and it’s about the crowd, it’s about you and the taste you feel in your mouth. I personally feel the taste of youth when I sing 505 because it reminds me of my teenage years and the way I wish someone had felt like about me back then.

These songs just hit different live, not that they weren’t already an experience in my earbuds but I remember thinking I had to listen to them live just to have this moment, just so I could scream the lyrics at the top of my lungs because they feel so right and they feel so good.

What concert would you like to see again? Why?

"no thoughts, head empty"- Alex Turner, 2018 alt. title: VVIBE WITH ME: a review of tranquility base hotel and casino in leopard print and shorts

vvibing to the Arctic Monkeys' The Ultracheese, I'm a firm believer that if you didn't like Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino you are just not really listening to it and letting it tell its story. It tells you everything you need to know to like it, from the moment Alex sings that he just wanted to be one of The Strokes at the beginning of the album to the moment he sings that he's probably not deep in thought, that's just his face.

The evolution from AM to Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino is delightful to see, AM being the top, the maximum fame that Arctic Monkeys has ever had with the catchy songs and the construction of Alex's character during that period; You know,  going from the whole bad boy look of the 50s, the way AM talks about parties and bars and people to TBHC being the opposite of it, talking about the illusion of fame with a debauched tone but at the same time with a touch of loneliness, like a drunk person who makes fun of the situation he is in but knows that in the background there’s a little bit of truth to the jokes. The way it talks about dressing up like a fictional character from a place he calls America seems to me like a perfect response to the life he lived back in the AM era.

AM is a peak album, an album dazzled by a surreal American world and perfect to conquer American youth and TBHC is a deep dive in this tattered illusion, a beautiful album about decadence. In a way I feel like AM has an adolescent energy, perhaps because I listened to it a lot during my teenage years, but also because of the way Alex Turner describes things in such a dramatic way, full of life or death, love or hate, in the lyrics and sounds like someone who's drunk on teenage power. The disappointment of AM is not the same as that of TBHC, the disappointment of the former is singular, it’s a person; while in TBHC it’s the world, it’s the creative scene, it is the industry. I feel like the band but mostly Alex, understood that trying to make another AM was simply ridiculous so even if unconsciously they embraced the idea that the thing after that was decadence and they built an entire reality around it, like what would decadence feel like? How does it sound? How does it look? And to them it looked like the vacation spot on the moon, far away from humanity but still human, being treated like a god and then being forgotten.

The criticism towards society is also so on point in this one, while AM was quite empty in this subject, a thing that pops up every now and then in Arctic Monkeys’ songs, see Teddy Picker for an example, Tranquility Base just goes deep into it, from technology to politics and not in a forceful way, I mean it’s clearly there, but it’s also not just about it and it’s not a political album like the openly critical about the government American Idiot by Green Day. Alex sings very delicately about the way social habits have changed in the era of social media in The Ultracheese, talking about freaking out from a knock at the door when you haven’t been expecting one, and satirizes advertising in Four Out of Five with the idea of selling people things in the verge of an apocalypse.

The way he does not demonize any of these things, but just kind of brings it up, makes me feel like there’s a bright future for the band even after the great success of AM and the popular hate on TBHC. It feels contemporary, I feel that in a personal level Alex is aware he’s aging and he doesn’t try to stop it, he embraces it, he collaborates with new younger artists and he is not the young and wild rockstar anymore, and I am talking about the way I read it, but he feels secure in his age and it shows so much that it feels like to the outside world he is perceived as cooler than he has ever been because Alex writes about this part of probably his career without making us listeners feel like it’s just an old man's complaint.

One other thing I really like in this album is this dark and golden vibe it has, the '70s inspired aesthetic, I think it ties well to the idea of decay and rejection of modernity right now since the '70s were an era of embracing modernity and rejecting tradition, people who didn't agree with the technological advances of the time or failed to open their minds to a new moment in history were left to decay and be forgotten. I think the fastest way to decay is to not accept and embrace modernity like I can see this in my own generation in the way people reject Tik Tok just because it’s new, it’s young and dumb when in reality it being young and dumb is what makes it so amazing. Being open-minded and getting in touch with another generation and at least partially understanding them is a blessing and I think the band understands this so although people hated the album back in 2018, I feel like it’s on the way to becoming a modern classic.

vibing in leopard print shirt from Zara (R$119, 2018), running shorts, that I bought because "make some noise" is written on them and I just really like MCR, from Renner (R$69, 2018), sunglasses (R$40), old ass picture of NYC that is around 11 years old (R$??????)

What did you think of Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino? How are you feeling about the end of the world?