Arctic Monkeys
Favourite Worst Nightmare
April 24
The cynicism is as barbed as the guitar riffs on Arctic Monkeys' second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, and the guitar riffs bristle. Their 2006 debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, rode an Internet buzz fueled by the band's giving away its songs before release, but the momentum came from the songs themselves. Arctic Monkeys arrived amid a wave of English bands that were rediscovering the terse melodies and hurtling, hard-nosed narratives of new-wave rock.
In the time between albums Arctic Monkeys have shifted their perspective from the nightlife, gigs, booze and flirtations of their debut album to a more encompassing disillusionment and sense of betrayal. "We're forever unfulfilled, and can't think why," the band declares in This House Is a Circus.
Turner's lyrics are so tightly packed that he sometimes delivers them as fast as a rapper. In the rush of rhymes, nearly everyone and everything is a cheat: lovers, hustlers, tabloid media, even nostalgic memories. Balaclava and The Bad Thing are pickups with a bad conscience from the start; Do Me a Favour focuses on the moment of a breakup. Fluorescent Adolescent mourns the way lust wanes — "Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness/Landed in a very common crisis" — while If You Were There, Beware, denounces the way reporters exploit suffering: "Can't you sense she was never meant to fill column inches."
The new songs are more melodic and even more meticulous than before. Arctic Monkeys have almost ruled out standard punk strumming. Instead they have zeroed in on the counterpoint of the two guitars, neatly separated on left and right channels and clawing fiercely at each other. The songs take pride in that bitter clarity.
Nine Inch Nails
Year Zero
April 17
Trent Reznor enjoys taking his time between records — five years between each of his first three studio records and six years between his third and fourth albums. So fans should note that Year Zero, his fifth full-length CD, arrives less than two years after his last outing, With Teeth.
Fans' learned behavior — that of waiting — was disrupted months ago when Reznor and his friends started a mostly online campaign advancing Year Zero with a complex back story.
While With Teeth was a return to form for Reznor, who first broke with the 1989 classic Pretty Hate Machine, Year Zero is an exploration of minimalistic electronic programming. Instrumental opener Hyperpower! recalls The Downward Spiral's uber-percussion heyday, and the album's lead single, Survivalism, takes that unique approach to drums/programming and adds to it. Reznor experiments with his vocals, adding hiccup-like breaths, meditative spoken word heavy on the downbeat and slides into his upper register.
The result is a classic NIN track, something that will fit naturally into his live sets alongside Terrible Lie and Into the Void. The rest of the album is solid with a few stand-out tracks. Me, I'm Not is quietly lush and surprisingly soulful, composed with sounds that can make you uncomfortable.
The few guitars in The Warming are manipulated and bent brilliantly, and it lends an exciting Indian aesthetic to the song. Capital G starts with The Way You Make Me Feel drums but elevates into a political rager with Reznor, again, exploring new vocal territory.
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