OK, I'll suck it.

I'm pretty buggered by constantly being beaten at the finish line in the run-up to important album releases. Last time it was Radiohead, who decided to release The King of Limbs a day early, just for the sake of it. This time around, it's Arctic Monkeys, who've made their upcoming fourth LP, Suck It And See, available for streaming in its entirety today - a week before its actual release. Now, how are we bloggers supposed to plan for these kinds of things? With The King of Limbs I decided to panic-attack, and completely trashed the preview post I had intended to do. But this time around, no, no way. To stay in the terminology, I have sucked it once, and I urge you guys to suck it too, and you bet there's gonna be a review as soon as I get my hands on the album proper, but for now, let me take you through a ride down memory lane through three very different - and each very excellent - big brothers of Suck It And See. I've picked out my three favorites from each album, just to get our taste buds back on track for Alex T. and his gang.


January 2006
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

How d'you reckon the wine bar bummy on that picture is on the cover of the fastest selling debut album in UK recording history? Well, that's how it went down when benchmark Myspace sensation and street kids of the 21st century Arctic Monkeys finally descended upon record stores after months of unprecedented hype. Whatever... was an impressively cocksure barrage of potent, zip tight and youthfully witty British-as-Marmite indie rock, straight from the hips of kids just barely turned 20.


#2. 'I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor'
But of course my horse, a list like this could be initiated more properly than by the band's signature hit. Only a mere three minutes long, this up-tempo tale of hip-twisting murky club courtshipping has become a floor-filler from Reading to Rio.


#6. 'Still Take You Home'
Pivotal at #6 on the track list, this is '... Dancefloor''s filthy cousin, iconically tell-tale recounting what happens to chastity, taste and principles once a good bender's on the way - "You're just probably all right, but under these eyes, you look beautiful".


#13. 'A Certain Romance'
The critics' standout track on this album, and the one it's comme il faut to like, even if you don't like Arctic Monkeys, '... Romance' kicks back and reminisces over the exact same post-modern society its creators are so inevitably a part of. There's a slightly different narrative and perspective here, crowned by iconic statement: "There's only music so that there's new ringtones". What a dystopia by a bunch of young lads whose trademark sound is distinctively ringtone-unfit.


April 2007
Favourite Worst Nightmare

Faster, louder, fiercer. That's the way the band developed in the mere 15 months that came and went between their first two releases. Riding the wave of success perhaps, a lot of people initially feared the Monkeys had taken their mouths too full. But despite the apparent kinship between the two, Favourite... eventually grew to play its own part in the discography.


#6. 'Only Ones Who Know'
Curiously slotted between big hit 'Fluorescent Adolescent' and the grandiose 'Do Me A Favour', this takes the band to previously unvisited ground, the slow-moving balladry that has since revealed itself as one of the band's true strengths. Favourite Worst Nightmare is less "I can take on the world"-like and more humble than its predecessor, and nowhere does that come more to the fore than on this brilliant tune.


#7. 'Do Me A Favour'
Perhaps my favourite Arctic Monkeys tune, hands down. Combine some of the most strong and personal lyrics by a superb lyricist with Matt Helders at his most potent, and you get epic like this. Even stronger if you turn up the volume.


#12. '505'
As its predecessor, Favourite Worst Nightmare finishes off on a pensive note, with '505', which for the first time sees the band employ the organ that would become so vital on the next album, making this sort of a bridge-builder. It's more than that though, it's a staggeringly well-built piece of music, gloriously peaking with Turner finally letting all his emotions run wild at 2:29, unleashing suppressed fierceness that has loomed through the album.


August 2009
Humbug

Two more years went, and the band ended up in the Mojave Desert with bona fide desert rat Josh Homme. Darker, slower and vastly more mature, Humbug has divided fans, but ages like a fine wine.


#6. 'Fire And The Thud'
I love how some of Humbug's tunes creep and crawl and slowly enter your system, and none is more worthy of that description than this tune, on which Turner exposes his blank white vulnerable throat to the barking dogs of betrayal and heartbreak: "The day after you stole my heart, everything I touched told me it would be better shared with you."


#7. 'Cornerstone'
If '... Dancefloor' is the obvious first love on Whatever..., 'Cornerstone', although a vastly different beast, is so on Humbug. Etched beautifully in between the fragility of 'Fire And The Thud' and the aggressiveness of 'Dance Little Liar', this is so honest and beautiful it only endures by way of Turner's unsinkable lyrical talent.


#8. 'Dance Little Liar'
So, three in a row on Humbug? Well, this is definitely the album with the highest bar, but perhaps the lowest peak. These three latter half gems are the most instrumental though, and 'Dance Little Liar' is like the perfect final chapter to the story unfolding in the two preceding cuts. On this, Turner tucks his head back into his shell and defends himself with a cluster bomb of musical aggression.


What's next? Well, suck it and see...