The Arctic Monkeys At The Soul Tree, 25th August 2005

I’ve been chipping away at this in my drafts folder since the day after the gig because it was a superb night, and the Arctic Monkeys are fantastic but not that well known, so I wanted to pull together a good write-up. Getting on for three weeks later, it’s pretty obvious that the “good write-up” isn’t going to happen, so rather than have it forever consigned to the drafts folder, I’ve tidyied it up a little and provided a few mp3s to give a feel for how good they are. There’s no album on sale yet, but once there is I’d recommend buying it - I will be - and if they’re playing a town near you, then go see them!

There were two local acts in support:

Jaime Randall first. Not bad, just him on his acoustic guitar (until one of the strings snapped).

Then The Furious Sleep. Very loud. Not very well mixed - couldn’t really hear the singer, and only heard the keyboard during his 10 second solo in the last song. I only know the band’s name because we stopped the bass player later on and asked him - prompting a little mime of furious and sleep.

The Arctic Monkeys came on after a dance version of Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts - they sounded great as they had their own sound man, in fact there was some theatre as they strode onto the stage, each high-fiving the sound man as they passed him. Started with Fake Tales of San Francisco (which was the first of their tracks I ever heard - played quite a bit on 6 Music), and played Mardy Bum, Scummy Man, Dancing Shoes, Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor and some others I can’t remember now. We had much fun from the balcony watching three bouncers attempting to control a crowd which was going nuts - like King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

After the gig, the Soul Tree reverted back to its alter-ego of nightclub, and there was an indie disco for the rest of the night. It emptied out quite a lot once the band was finished, however, so when it looked likely that the extremely drunk bloke having trouble sitting upright next to us might throw up we decided to leave.

Update: I’ve removed the mp3s now, sorry, you’ll just have to wait for the album to come out (or get searching on the p2p networks…).