The Pop Corporation

“The Monkeys we loved are gone” wrote someone about the Arctic Monkeys headlining set at Glastonbury. “They used to be good” wrote another. Critics and fans alike had certain demands and preconceived notions, and it turns out that the Arctic Monkeys may have outmanoeuvred or outgrown fair weather music fans. Or do they just suck now?

Thing is, this isn’t the first case of a band switching things up, and it won’t be the last. The great Ian Macdonald wrote of the ‘falling masks’ of Bob Dylan, saying that he’d taken on more personas than David Bowie, yet every time, many fans thought they were seeing the real Bob. Dylan went from Folkie to Speed Freak Electric, and flitted between Country Gent and Born Again Christian, before seemingly settling of Lounge Bar Lizard. Of course, Bowie, Madonna and Kayne went through various guises, but we haven’t really seen it in ‘alternative’ rock music.

The Arctic Monkeys are doing it right now, but the trouble for some it seems, is that they’re doing it completely deadpan.

Initially, Alex Turner’s group were incredibly relatable Yorkshiremen, talking about the rough and tumble of every day life with a good dollop of one-liners and side-eyes. There’s a problem though, being The People’s Champs because that only works for so long when you attain the heights they have. If you plough a particular furrow like, say, Paul Heaton, you can live a life relatively normally, rocking up to pubs for some Seabrooks and a pint, un-mobbed. Alex Turner is not allowed such an opportunity, reaching a level out of indie music that no-one’s seen this side of the Gallagher brothers. And their schtick got tired years ago, regardless of whether you like the music or think they’re occasionally funny.

Turner has his sights set on something else and it doesn’t necessarily preclude enjoying the trappings of being a star.

Turner is approaching 40 years old, and the need for eternal youth with some pop fans, isn’t going to wash with someone who is more interested in watching Fellini movies and reading David Foster Wallace. While looking the part as a superstar (nice clobber, good hair, decent bone structure, mildly aloof), Turner is clearly not a natural showman, so he’s going to need a persona to hide behind. It’s not playing the Leadmill anymore – the stages the Monkeys find themselves on are all festival sized, effectively. And now the Americans love them too.

In the LA Times in 2006, it was noted that Turner seemed “a little spooked by the attention” and their headline slot at Glastonbury in ’07, it was noted in the Guardian that Turner was a “steady, wry” presence on stage. Ad-libs and patter is not something in the AM arsenal. That’s not to say they’re not enjoying what they do, but it’s obvious they can see through the artifice.

Turner’s sardonic outlook means that there’s no chance he’ll stick to trackie tops and kebabs, right? It’d be ridiculous to think that would be the case, despite occasional Monkeys fans hoping for exactly that. You see, look at what the die-hards were saying after the ’23 Glastonbury performance, and they knew exactly what they were going to get and left the field with their hair stood on end.

Even in the open song of the set, deadpan, Turner looked to the audience and sang “guess I’m talking to you now, puncturing your bubble of relatability with a horrible new sound.” He knows. And what we got from the whole thing was a genuine pricking of pomposity while playing the rockstar shape throwing fallen idol. Jacques Dutronc hair, Serge Gainsbourg sleaze, Bryan Ferry detachment, and altogether something both more grown-up, and somehow super camp.

Long gone is the kid watching lads and lasses outside taxi ranks, he’s now a famous person in a room full of models and leeches, slumped in a suit and taking in this weird maelstrom around him with a gold bracelet limply hanging from the wrist holding the brandy glass. Or at least, that’s what his character suggests.

The Guardian scribbled in noted in ’18 that Turner ironically “played with the role” of being a megastar, but at the same time “can’t help but be a real rock star”. This fascination with the artificial side of fame is something that has long been admired by the clever sods in rock & roll. Steely Dan made a career out of being in high profile rooms, but managing to be the awkward onlookers, ignored in the corner while the bad coke goes around them.

Arctic Monkeys are too good looking to be Becker & Fagen, but there’s something of a lampooning of this bizarro world of expensive suits and flash money from this period of the Monkeys, explicit or otherwise. It reminds us too of St Vincent’s recent persona of ‘Daddy’s Home’, all expensive 70s cynicism and poking at ego with a coke fingernail.

And Turner himself in on record as donning a mask of sorts. He refers to public speaking as being his “worst nightmare” and that being a frontman is “awkward”: “I can’t go out there and absolutely be myself… it’s not a full-on, ‘right, get into character‘ thing… part of how you actually feel comes out. But I think I always feel weird about that afterwards.”

A band that don’t sit still are always a good thing, if sometimes a risky option. You can alienate those who take a passing interest in you, but honestly, what artist worth their salt wants to settle for that? Let’s not forget that this is a band that put out ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ in 2018, an album that was part Crime Thriller OST, part ‘Histoire de Melody Nelson’, part concept LP about a luxury hotel on the moon.

If Roxy Music provided one of the most elegant send-ups of high society (the danger with Ferry was that he’d vanish into it, obviously), Turner & Co are playing with massive themes and veering away from rock & roll in it’s basic forms, to indulge in their love of Scott Walker and chanson. Instead of sticky dancefloor indie, we’ve now got lurid, cinematic baroque pop, spaghetti strings, and weary black-tie ballads, all song by unreliable narrators and snapshots of some other life.

The thing is, Turner is in danger of becoming legendary. There was some graffiti in Sheffield that read “Hey Alex. How’s California?”, like he’s some grim class traitor, when in actual fact, it sounds like he’s guilty of having a great record collection and an eye for an iconic silhouette.

While many of their peers from the club circuit may still be trying the old schtick for the lager crowd, Arctic Monkeys are occupying a noirish space left by, say, Portishead. Sure, they were NME darlings in their anoraks and scruffy haircuts, but now, while becoming every inch the stage idol, Alex Turner has done that thing that Bob Dylan did, and pretty much vanished into thin air right before our eyes. The more you look at him, the less you can see him.

It’s that artifice. He’s in on it. And you can tell the truth with a great lie.

And all this, from a writer who previously had no strong feelings about Arctic Monkeys as a group. That’s changed since seeing the Glastonbury ’23 headlining performance. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a generational talent that was willing to evaporate and give themselves over to the aesthetic and mood of their own music, and honestly, it looks like they were there all along, we just didn’t notice and in some ways, that exactly as intended.

Absolutely magnificent.