Arctic Monkeys Blog

Blast From The Past - An advertisement (circa 2006) that...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:54:03 -0400

Blast From The Past - An advertisement (circa 2006) that almost-but-not-quite uses a well-known Arctic Monkeys number to sell their juice.

more of these to come.

Arctic Monkeys Announce UK Tour

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:59:06 -0400

Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce details of their forthcoming UK arena tour in October & November 2011. Starting at the Capital FM Arena in Nottingham on Friday 28th October and taking in 9 dates across the UK, including a show at London’s O2 Arena, the band will wrap things up at the Liverpool Echo Arena on Wednesday 9th November 2011.

Tickets for these dates will go on general sale on Friday 17th June at 9am.

Full list of dates below:

OCTOBER

Friday 28th October               Nottingham Capital FM Arena
Saturday 29th October           London The O2 Arena
Tuesday 1st November          Cardiff Motorpoint Arena
Wednesday 2nd November     Manchester MEN Arena
Friday 4th November              Birmingham LG Arena
Saturday 5th November          Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
Sunday 6th November            Aberdeen AECC
Tuesday 8th November          Glasgow SECC Hall 4
Wednesday 9th November     Liverpool Echo Arena

Lollapalooza Day Performance Announced

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:57:19 -0400

Arctic Monkeys will play the Sunday 7th August at Lollapalooza 2011. The festival takes place over 3 days at Grant Park, Chicago, IL. For more information on lineup and how to get tickets, go to, http://lollapalooza.com

Suck It And See - Studio Interview

Sun, 29 May 2011 18:07:23 -0400

Suck It And See - Studio Interview

Important Ticket Information for Don Valley

Sun, 29 May 2011 17:56:23 -0400

Arctic Monkeys @ Don Valley Bowl, Sheffield - Friday 10th/Saturday 11th June 2011.

From event organisers SJM.

Thank you to those who have purchased tickets to see the Arctic Monkeys at Sheffield Don Valley Bowl.

Just to clarify a few points regarding entry for these shows.

The card holder DOES NOT have to be present on entry if they are not attending the show. All that needs to be present on enry is the card that the tickets were booked on.

All tickets purchased have to arrive together with the lead booker.

If the card used has since expired, lost or not available, please email amcustomerservices@sjmconcerts.com by TUESDAY 7TH JUNE with the details and the necessary arrangements will be made for you. Please supply the following information:

-Which Ticket Agent/Website you purchased your ticket(s) from
-Name
-Address
-Card Number
-Booking Reference or Ticket Numbers

Many thanks
SJM Concerts

Arctic Monkeys Announce French Date

Sun, 29 May 2011 17:55:21 -0400

Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce they will be performing at Le Zenith Nantes Metropole on 29th June 2011. Tickets go on sale at 10am on Friday 20th May from here.

Arctic Monkeys Announce Amsterdam Show

Tue, 10 May 2011 08:41:46 -0400

Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce they will be performing at the Paradiso in Amsterdam, Netherlands on Thursday 23rd June 2011. Tickets go on sale on Saturday 14th May 2011 from http://www.paradiso.nl

Listen to ‘Reckless Serenade’ from new album...

Mon, 09 May 2011 13:34:00 -0400

Listen to ‘Reckless Serenade’ from new album ‘Suck it and See’

Further Don Valley Tickets Released

Mon, 09 May 2011 13:33:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys have released additional tickets for both Don Valley shows on Friday 10th & Saturday 11th June 2011.

To purchase tickets, click here. Please read the below ticketing terms & conditions before purchasing.

TICKETING TERMS & CONDITIONS

This is a concert for fans only and the following rules are in place to ensure that tickets do not get sold on and fans do not pay a higher price for their tickets.

The lead booker will be asked to present ID and the card used during the booking to gain entry into the venue. Failure to do so will result in the customer being turned away and no refunds will be issued. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The surname of the lead booker and the last four digits of the card used to make the booking will be printed on each ticket. The surname and card details cannot be changed once the booking has been made.

If you are booking more than one ticket your guests must arrive at the concert at the same time as you. Failure to do so will result in the guests being turned away.

All tickets will be scanned at the entry to the concert.

Tickets cannot be resold or transferred under any circumstances. If See or SJM Concerts reasonably believe this to be the case the barcode on the ticket will be invalidated, prohibiting entry to the concert.

Please note there is a ticket limit of 4 per billing address.

Age Restriction: 14+ (ALL UNDER 16’s MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT)

Arctic Monkeys Headline Rock En Seine

Tue, 03 May 2011 09:42:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys will be headlining the 2011 Rock En Seine Festival which takes place in Domaine National de Saint Cloud in France on Saturday 27th August 2011. For more information and how to get tickets go to http://rockenseine.com

Alex Turner's Guide To 'Suck It And See'

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:56:00 -0400

Alex gives a track by track guide to the new album via NME.com blogs

She’s Thunderstorms

I remember writing this one when there was a storm going on. They get like mad storms over there [in New York], like, apocalyptic. I’m always trying to think of different interesting ways to like describe somebody but compliment them too. So in that one, I like the idea that she’s not even a thunderstorm, she’s more than one. I quite like the fact she’s plural. ‘Thunderstorms’ meaning just, y’know, awesome!

Black Treacle

This was much later down the line. I watched a couple of westerns when we were doing this, like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid which gets a reference in there. I also just wanted to put ‘belly-button piercings’ in a tune, I thought that would be good. I’d kind of wanted to do it for a couple of weeks and then managed to fit it in there. Why? I’d not thought about them for a while and they came on my radar somehow. And then I thought about this thing of them and the stars being juxtaposed.

Brick By Brick

It’s just a fucking laugh, isn’t it? It’s got, like, three “rock’n’rolls” in it. We were in Miami on tour once and we just got off a long flight to there and we had an idea for a song called ‘Brick By Brick’ and so we wrote it that night just sorta in a bar. But it were quite loose, we thought about it as the concept of a song and all these things that you want to do – brick by brick – and we just made a list of them that was probably three times as long as what it ended up over that night and the next few weeks. It was probably the first tune we had for this. We’re also working on ‘Brick By Brick 2.0’. It’s called ‘IDST’. Do you remember that? When you’d write on a bus seat, or whatever, ‘I love whoever IDST’ – If Destroyed Still True? So that iron’s in the fire now.”

The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala

There’s always a load of words in our tunes, isn’t there. And I was trying to think of a way of being a bit more economical, so we thought the one way of doing that is having really simple choruses but quite complicated verses lyrically – and that were one of them. I mean it’s based on a place that I’ve been but I don’t necessarily want that to be what the listener associates it with. ’Cause maybe they can relate it to a place they’ve been. I don’t want to ruin that by giving them a map. Some great harmonies on this song too. [Producer] James Ford’s favourite bit of this record is on that song. It goes “uh-oh-uh-oh-wo”. Maybe it’s because it sounds like the Klaxons. I always think he prefers them to us.

Don’t Sit Down ’Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair

Well, that’s something somebody said. Oh, in fact I said it to somebody whose chair I’d moved and I didn’t want them to hurt themselves. This was while we were in the studio doing the Submarine recording [Alex recorded the soundtrack to friend Richard Ayoade’s debut film] and James said, ‘Oh, that sounds like it could be like a ’60s garage Nuggets tune and be called that’. So then we thought, well, ok if that’s what you can’t do (sit down, ’cos I’ve moved your chair), then what sort of ridiculous things can you do that are probably more dangerous than if you just sat down? But also I quite like that it’s, y’know, well, you don’t want people to be sat down, do you? You want them to be up. That’s going to be our first single I think.

Library Pictures

“This is one where I definitely think the words are taking a backseat. It’s just about chaos. Like, all the sound of it – all the music and guitars and drums – everything’s just barmy and I’m trying to make the lyrics subscribe to that as well. Do I ever do that William Burroughs thing where you cut words up and arrange them randomly? No, I never actually do it physically but maybe in my head a little bit. We recorded it one day like really hungover and had a great day. It were a really good hangover, like a giddy one.

All My Own Stunts

Josh [Homme] comes and sings on this one. He’s very dominant, his voice. When you record his voice it just sort of leaps out, it’s great. What else can I tell you about that one? It’s got another reference to cowboy films. It just says, “I’ve been watching cowboy films on gloomy afternoons” which were something I were doing at the time. It’s also where we let ourselves have a bit of a wig-out.

There’s not as much wigging out on this [album] as the last one, we rationed it. Also at the end you hear a little snippet of this song we were making up while we in the studio there called ‘I’m From High Green’ which is where we’re from. It was summat we were singing quite a lot, the four of us, while we were there. How does it go again? Oh yeah, so you’ve got to do it in a sort of Chris Cornell-style vocal: “I lost my accent/I live the dream/but I still like my ale/because I’m from High Green”. That sort of thing. Look out for it, you get a little snip.

Reckless Serenade

I think this sort of sounds the best. I really like the recording of this one, I think it’s come out the best. It’s just a love song I suppose. In terms of the sound I guess some of the stuff we were listening to was like the Pixies. And having the drums quite tough, that comes across on that tune a bit.

Piledriver Waltz

This one is on the Submarine soundtrack although I didn’t write it specifically for that. I had a couple of things lying around that were too quiet to be Monkeys tunes – well, that’s what I thought, anyway. So I said, what about these and Richard [Ayoade] liked them. But then we were putting this together and I really thought it might fit in with ‘Thunderstorms’ and ‘Suck It And See’.

So we thought why not just do another version [recorded with the full band] because the one onSubmarine is just me and James, he played drums and there’s some strings and stuff on it. I think doing thatSubmarine album did lead me into some of the songs on this album too.”

Love Is A Laserquest

I’ve never listened to country music before, it was just something I totally didn’t get until pretty recently. I’ve always been, ‘Nah, not into that world’, but I’ve started to get something out of that now. The sort of sounds of that music I’m still not crazy about but the words are really good. Like Hank Williams, George Jones and Roger Miller and even like Johnny Cash – they’re just smart-arses, those guys, who write good country tunes, y’know. It’s really funny or really sad. And they do that thing so well. This tune is the closest to that. Not like in the sound, but in the lyrics.”

Suck It And See

That is something that I started writing when we were recording those Submarine tracks. It just sort of came to me that melody and chorus, it’s quite Beach Boys-y which is something I’ve been listening to a lot recently, and always have. We decided to make it the title track quite near the end – once the pedals thing didn’t really come off. When we played it to someone earlier they were asking us about the fizzy drink reference in that where it says “dandelion and burdock” – a lot of people don’t get that and don’t realise what it is.

Something I like the idea of is putting colloquialisms where they feel strange – especially in some of the other tunes like the fuzzy, heavier ones, it feels quite funny when you can drop in something very British next to ‘Raw Power’ guitars.

That’s Where You’re Wrong

It were all about having the words not get in the way of this one. That were one of the last ones we did when we were in London before Christmas. We did it in one day. It’s a bit like ‘505’ – that tune on the second album, where it’s just two chords all the way through and we’d wanted to do a tune like that again for a while. There’s loads of good examples of that like that LCD Soundsystem ‘All My Friends’ tune.

It’s just the two chords that build and build. But for a while I didn’t have words for that – I was just singing ‘Edge and Bono’. There’s a demo of it somewhere where it’s mostly ‘Edge and Bono’. I dunno what else to say about that one. It were a bit of a late runner that one but it worked out.”

'Suck It and See' Now Available to Pre-Order

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:41:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys new album ‘Suck It and See’ can now be pre-ordered from the Arctic Monkeys Official Store.

All pre-orders will receive high quality MP3s(320kbps) of album tracks “Brick by Brick” and “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” instantly upon purchase.

You will also receive an exclusive pre-order only 3x3 ‘iron-on’ embroidered patch(while stocks last).

Click here to pre-order ‘Suck It and See’ on CD & LP

Arctic Monkeys Announce Kanrocksas Performance

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:40:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys will perform at Kanrocksas at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City over the weekend of 5th & 6th August 2011. For more information and how to get tickets go to http://kanrocksas.com

Arctic Monkeys Announce Lollapalooza Performance

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:39:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce they will be performing at the 2011 Lollapalooza Festival. Lollapalooza takes place between the 5th-7th August - for full line-up and ticketing details, click here

Arctic Monkeys Announce August US Tour

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:38:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys will be heading out on a US Tour in August 2011. Beginning the run at The Palladium Ballroom in Dallas on 1st August and wrapping up with a performance at Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco, CA, tickets will go on sale from 10am(Local Time) on Friday 29th April 2011.

AUGUST

1st Aug             The Palladium Ballroom, Dallas, TX
2nd Aug            Stubbs, Austin, TX
3rd Aug             House of Blues, Houston, TX
10th Aug           The Showbox, Seattle, WA
11th Aug           Crystal Ballroom, Portland, OR
11th-13th Aug   Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, San Francisco, CA

‘Suck It And See’ Artwork Revealed

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:25:21 -0400

‘Suck It And See’ Artwork Revealed

Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair...

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:23:00 -0400

Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair (Official Video)

Arctic Monkeys Announce Rokslide Performance

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:59:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys will be performing at Roskilde Festival 2011. The festival takes place between 30th June - 3rd July in Roskilde, Denmark.

Tickets are available now from here.

Arctic Monkeys - Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve...

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:13:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys - Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair (FULL)

Break a mirror, roll the dice
Run with scissors through a chip pan firefight
Go into business with a grizzly bear
But just don’t sit down ‘cause i’ve moved your chair

Find a well known hard man and start a fight
Wear your shell suit on bonfire night
Fill a circular hole with a peg that’s square
But just don’t sit down ‘cause i’ve moved your chair

Oooooh, Yeah Yeah Yeah

Bite the lightning and tell me how it tastes
Kung-fu fighting on your roller skates
Do the macarena in the devil’s lair
But just don’t sit down ‘cause I’ve moved your chair

Oooooh, Yeah Yeah Yeah

Arctic Monkeys Announce Outside Lands Performance

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:10:00 -0400

Arctic Monkeys are pleased to announce they will be performing at Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival 2011. The festival takes place between 12th-14th August 2011 in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA.

For more information and how to get tickets, go to, http://www.sfoutsidelands.com