Arctic Monkeys - 'Teddy Picker'
In these fretful times, with endless dire warnings of imminent eco disaster, urgent pleas for everyone to please think globally, and act locally, and general resource-maximising worry-panic, it is heartening to see the good work being done by this colony of Arctic Monkeys. Perhaps mindful of the disastrous inpact the melting of the polar ice-caps may have on their frosty ape brethren, they have taken matters into their own hands, and begun a comprehensive recycling scheme.
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And, as we will see, it's not just bottles, tins and paper which can be revamped and reused. Riffs, melodies and lyrics can all be taken to a musical processing plant ground down into nuggets, melted together again and be put into service as entirely new music.
Why this song in particular has been recast using substantial amounts of the left-over elements from the song 'Fake Tales Of San Fransisco', previously a firm favourite among the Monkey tribe. The guitar riff and the verse melody have both been altered significantly by the recycling process, but are still entirely recognisable in their new form.
Taking things a step further, King Monkey Alex Turner has even managed to recycle his own opening line, for use halfway through the first verse. A feat of lyrical economy that even the Crazy Frog would admire. Fortunately for word-gluttons, it's a very good line, concerning the brittle short attention span of a voracious, media-saturated public:
"it's getting to the point where they provoke
the punchline before you have told the joke"
Or is the brittle, short attention span of a voracious, public-saturated media? It's something like that, anyway.
Actually, once you start to think of this song as a cautionary tale, describing the way everyone seems to be a little too quick to suck up and then dump every new thing popular culture has to offer at an enormous rate, it becomes fitting that there are echoes of past (and present) Monkey triumphs running through the whole thing.
It's as if the band are saying "hey, you remember how we did this kind of thing, and we were really good at it? Well, we still are. Especially Matt Helders. He's our drummer and he's bloody great!".
Which is fair enough, really. They're not wrong. Whether the Starbucks-jittery twenty-somethings who form the core of today's superconsumer society get the point, or act on it, is a whole other thing. Points for trying tho.
(Incidentally, the PrettyMuchAmazing blog is attempting to examine and discuss they can find, which is very much in keeping with the idea of consumption slowdown as discussed within this song, and the review of this song, and everything. Hurrah!)
Download: Out now
CD Released: December 3rd
(Fraser McAlpine)
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