After 57 dates in 33 countries, the Arctic Monkeys’ world tour will return to the United Kingdom on Monday for a series of stadium performances.
And anyone who has seen them recently knows that they have been strolling on stage to either Barry White’s I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby or Tom Jones’s It’s Not Unusual.
“It’s like our little moment,” says percussionist Matt Helders.
“Before we take the stage, we all do a little performance backstage. We’re quite close. We have a solid thing going on.”
When asked how the band chose their entrance music, Helders responded, “Barry White gets us in the mood, but Tom Jones even more so, in terms of tempo and getting us pumped to do a show.
The band also mocked Jones’s terrible performance of their debut single, I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor.
The Welsh singer’s shoddy cabaret performance at 2007’s Concert For Diana was highly criticised for “ruining” the original.
Later, he joked, “We were going to release it, but the reviews were so bad that we decided against it.”
The UK segment of Arctic Monkeys’ tour begins at Bristol’s Ashton Gate Stadium, with subsequent stops in Coventry, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Sheffield, Swansea, Southampton, and London.
It is their first stadium tour in the United Kingdom, “which is something we never thought we’d do,” Helders explains.
They have been experimenting with large outdoor performances in South America and Australia. But Helders says they are “still figuring out” the transition from smaller venues.
“We alter the setlist frequently based on the circumstances. However, I believe that once the audience reaches a certain size, it begins to feel similar – in terms of what we play, not the experience.”
The tour is in support of the band’s seventh studio album, The Car, which expands upon the lounge-like, spaced-out orchestral sounds of their previous album, Tranquilly Base Hotel & Casino.
Last year, while speaking with Radio One’s Jack Saunders, Helders acknowledged that some of the album’s intricate drum patterns were “more difficult” to perform than the “flashier” and raucous material on the band’s earlier albums.
“It’s difficult to capture the nuances of what occurs on this record,” he affirms. “Restraint is quite difficult, and that extends to live performances as well because you can get enthusiastic and want to show off.
“However, there are periods in the set where I can scratch that itch. We’ll play all the action-packed songs, and then it’ll calm down for a while. It is well-balanced.”
The tour has received predominantly positive reviews. Variety magazine praised the band’s “slicked-back swagger.” While Sydney’s Morning Herald described their January performance as “one of the summer’s defining concerts”
Alex Turner’s band will finish their UK tour with a third Glastonbury headliner on June 23.
