Review

The guy on the cover of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (WPSIA) looks like Adam Sandler. I feel like I’m the only one who notices this and it bugs me. It so obviously looks just like Adam Sandler. Am I wrong? Does he look like Adam Sandler or not? How did Arctic Monkeys (AM) know Adam Sandler? Someone please say something.

Oh yeah, this is a great britpop album with some garage rock-y energy backing it up. Good thing too because it’s rare you see a britpop album that is consistently good outside of the singles. I feel like I’d like this band more if I weren’t jealous of all the chicks they pulled. Confident British pricks.

Unbalanced Song Strength

Edit: After a revisit, I’m thoroughly on the side that Favourite Worst Nightmare is easily superior to WPSIA. This Adam Sandler tribute album opens with a one-two punch for the history books with their best song “The View From the Afternoon,” and what the public mistakenly but understandably purport is their best song, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.” The kind of pales in comparison, sadly.

It’s no secret that the best Arctic Monkeys songs are their singles. They’re a pop band, it’s what they do. But when the rest can’t hand out a single comparable hook and just recycles the strummy post-punky format, then what’s the point? Yeah there’s two or three “ballads,” but most of these tracks are fun but useless. Alex Turner’s lyrics are at his best, but what pop rock album can be carried solely by lyricism? The answer is none, and even still the best filler here maybe has a few seconds of a good idea repeated now and again until it’s over with the same fluff separating that actually grabbing moment.

Favourite Worst Nightmare doesn’t reach the height of this album (“heights” not used because it’s one song), but it’s everything the rest of this is but improved, and with a greater palette added to their songwriting to make the album experience something worthwhile. No cute, relatively “experimental” tracks like “This House Is a Circus.” Just a bunch of raucous… whatever. Listen to the first two tracks on repeat. Maybe throw in “Fake Tales,” “Ritz,” or “A Certain Romance” when you get tired—and then go back to repeating the first two.