Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Suck It And See’ 10 years on
It’s been 10 years since the first indie band from Sheffield to break America and subsequently make a name for themselves across the globe released their lovestruck 4th album ‘Suck It and See’
Photo: Tom Oxley
When people think of iconic Arctic Monkeys albums, their first thoughts are probably the band’s Brit Award-winning first two albums, the riff-heavy fifth album AM or their most recent, more refined album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Even Humbug, with a more mixed reception than their other albums, seems to be pretty well known and widely discussed, perhaps in part thanks to it being the first album Queens of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme produced for them.
Suck It and See is the album that tends to go under the radar, in fact, it ranks dead last in terms of the number of album sales and none of the Monkeys’ top 10 biggest songs are from this album. It’s fair to say that this was the band’s least popular album, although that’s not to say its release went completely under the radar. It still reached number 1 in the album charts although only staying there for one week — the least amount of time at the top spot for any of their records.
Even so, this album is criminally underrated and in my opinion one of their best works.
I myself grew up listening to their first two albums — thanks to my parents’ good taste — but didn’t discover Suck It and See until going through that indie phase we all go through at sixteen where we exclusively listen to the likes of Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines.
Library Pictures was the first song I listened to from the album, it was instantly one of my favourites and I was very excited to see what else the album had to offer.
The album was produced by James Ford (who has also worked with Foals, Florence and The Machine, Gorillaz and HAIM) and it saw Arctic Monkeys take a more pop-y and vintage sound compared with their previous album Humbug, which had a darker, more experimental feel to it.
This album particularly showcases the brilliance (and bizarreness) of Alex Turner’s mind in the form of some of the finest lyrical work he has produced to date.
He takes us on a journey from the psychedelic absurdity of Library Pictures, the continuation from Humbug of sickly sweet food comparisons in Black Treacle, and the wistful Love is a Laserquest, in which Turner reminisces about losing ‘the one’.
You’d be hard-pressed to find any of their songs with more emotionally charged lyrics than those in the melancholic Piledriver Waltz, originally written for the soundtrack of the Submarine film.
With O’Malley providing his usual brilliant bass and Cook and Turner experimenting on guitar, they seem to draw more on their pop and garage influences with this album, showing particularly notable moments in the more upbeat Library Pictures, the psychedelic-esque solo in All My Own Stunts and the guitar-heavy Brick By Brick.
The singles from this album, Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair, The Hellcat Spangled Shalalala, Suck It and See and Black Treacle are all classics but really this album needs to be played wholly and in order to appreciate the journey from A to B.
Suck It and See played an important part in the progression of the bands’ sound and you can see some similarities between it and their follow-up album, AM, with the heavier, psychedelic-influenced guitar work in parts, although it lacks that ‘American rock’ swagger that AM embodies.
Ten years later and this album still holds its own; an indie rock masterpiece that offers something a bit different to the other Arctic Monkeys records and should be dually remembered and appreciated alongside their most popular albums.
