Live Review: Arctic Monkeys

Live Review: Arctic Monkeys

We're the young generation, and we've got something to say: Aidin Vaziri | The Monkeys appeared as four slouching figures in a puff of purple smoke, tentatively clutching their instruments and keeping their eyes firmly focused on their shoelaces. The first few songs passed in a blur of raw, ragged energy, each one seemingly tossed off. The tempo never shifted. The fog never lifted. Heavy-lidded singer Alex Turner barely said a word, intelligible or otherwise. It wasn't until the band reached its whacked-out first single, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," well past the halfway mark of its hourlong set, that the walls started to shake violently. From then on, the tuneless metallic clamor of the first bit of the show gave way to the sly R&B groove of "Leaving Before the Lights Come On" (courtesy of replacement bass player Nick O'Malley, who was, ironically, playing with a broken hand), the gnawing punk melody of "When the Sun Goes Down," and the bitter, seesawing chorus of club hit, "Fake Tales of San Francisco." But how many more of those do they have in them? It might be saying something that they left the stage without an encore.