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ShareSometimes you have to slow up or take a detour to get to your next destination — as Alex Turner learned on the way to the Arctic Monkeys’ third album, “Humbug” (Domino), released a few months ago.
The band’s singer and songwriter, Turner was barely 20 in 2006 when he suddenly found himself in England’s biggest band. Less than two years later, the Sheffield quartet had released two bestselling albums (“Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not” and “Favourite Worst Nightmare”), but the whirlwind of recording and constant touring had taken its toll. The band’s original bassist, Andy Nicholson, quit in 2006 (replaced by Nick O’Malley), and Turner acknowledges that “by the time we got done touring the second album, we were a bit burned out. There wasn’t the energy we had before.”
Turner says the success of “Whatever People Say I Am” was almost too much too soon.
“We weren’t very sure of ourselves,” he says. “We were still figuring it out. You’re right in it, and it’s hard to understand. Fortunately, we had each other. I was lucky to be going through it with my friends. (Drummer Matt Helders) and I have known each other since we were 7 years old. (Guitarist Jamie Cook) and I were friends in school when we started playing guitars together and decided to form the band. I can’t imagine what it would have been like with people I didn’t know as well.”
The band decided to record “Favourite Worst Nightmare” as a quick follow-up to the best-selling debut.
“It was important to rush in and do the second record in the wake of the first one and all the chaos it caused,” Turner says. “Otherwise, we could have deliberated about it, and freaked out about what it should be. Who knows, we could’ve talked ourselves into recording a rap album.”
But Turner acknowledges that the second album lacked the quality control of the debut. “There are tunes on there that I still love playing,” he says, “and a few others that were a mistake.”
He recharged his creative batteries by stepping away from the band briefly to record as the Last Shadow Puppets with another childhood friend, Miles Kane. The resulting 2008 album, “The Age of the Understatement,” exposed Turner to new sounds and approaches.
Whereas with the Arctic Monkeys he specialized in closely observed narratives about nightlife misadventure over hurtling beats and concise guitars, the Last Shadow Puppets explored more atmospheric orchestrations and Turner developed a deeper, more reflective singing voice.
“I turned a bit of a corner as a songwriter and singer making that record,” Turner says. “The way I was singing on that record really bled into the next thing we did.”
When the Arctic Monkeys reconvened earlier this year to record “Humbug,” they decided to shake up the formula by working with Queens of the Stone Age singerguitarist Josh Homme as producer in his California desert studio near Joshua Tree.
“Josh had a huge influence on us, and not just by bringing us away from the studio environment we’d been in before,” Turner says. “He brought Jamie and I out on guitar, encouraged us to work out some new sounds and textures. I’d never recorded with a slide on my guitar until this record. Even with all the keyboards on it, it’s more of a guitar record than we’d ever done.
We’d rush through the solos before, just chuck them down, but now we were working out our parts more.”
There’s more breathing room in the songs, and Turner stretches his voice as a singer and his chops as a songwriter, with greater emphasis on melody and harmony vocals.
His lyrics are more metaphorical and abstract, in contrast to the character studies and vignettes that made up the first two albums.
“This approach actually allowed me to be more personal in the lyrics,” Turner says. “I could disguise it a bit, which gave me license to put more of me in there, without feeling exposed. I’d always written about this cast of individuals who were extensions of people I know.”
He returns to that narrative style on one of the album’s best songs, “Cornerstone,” about how an obsession with an ex-girlfriend plays games with the narrator’s mind.
“Lyrics are my strong point, really,” Turner says. “I put a bit of a veil over the lyrics on this album, so ‘Cornerstone’ was written in response to that. The album needed a song on there that was a bit more direct and understandable lyrically — you are right there with this guy, what he’s experiencing. It’s our way of saying that even though we’re moving on, we haven’t forgotten what got us where we are.”
