Arctic Monkeys Crank Up Guitars on ‘Kimmel’
After Arctic Monkeys were apparently bumped from Jimmy Kimmel Live last week when Kimmel cleared up a beef with Kanye West, the host made it up to the British rockers last night when they took over the outdoor stage for a pair of songs from their new album AM.
The foursome opened with “Do I Wanna Know,” with singer Alex Turner’s vocals snaking their way through the taut unison guitar riff that anchors the song. Arctic Monkeys ratcheted up the energy even further on the next song, “R U Mine,” a terse rocker with brawny guitars that evoked early Black Sabbath – who Turner has cited as an influence on AM, along with Nineties hip-hop acts like Dr. Dre and Outkast.
“It’s like a chemical reaction,” Turner told Rolling Stone this summer. “If you get the wrong amount of one element, smoke comes out of the test tube. There was a lot of demo’ing and dead ends.”