The Arctic Monkeys can make mistakes? What?
American rockers The Orwells have recently finished a supporting run alongside Arctic Monkeys, and on the heels of the arena tour the band has taken aim at the “Do I Wanna Know?” rockers’ predictable, scripted live performance.
In an interview with Gigwise, guitarist Matt O’Keefe said: “When you’re playing arenas and everything, it’s a huge production, then the show has to become synchronized to work. So every night, no matter how he [Alex Turner] was feeling, he’d go into that opening riff. It was the exact same ad-libs he was putting between the songs. So we were with them for about 50 dates, you saw them once and you’d pretty much seen every date that they’d played.”
Arctic Monkeys interview: AM, Haircuts and the love of Austin
While the Arctic Monkeys have seen a sharp evolution of their onstage persona and live performance over the past 2-3 years (specifically a lean towards Elvis-level-cocky future-rockabilly schtick by frontman Alex Turner), the band have certainly adopted a more formulaic approach to their larger scale shows. The direct criticism is a departure from the general fawning the Sheffield rockers have enjoyed in an uninterrupted stream in recent years.
Frontman Mario Cuomo was more specific: “You don’t have to take that route,” he said. “You can get that level of success with those size venues, that sort of thing, but still treat it as a spontaneous show at a small club. So it all just depends on the band, what they’re going for and what they feel comfortable with. I would feel super uncomfortable if I knew what I was going to say in between songs.”
