Arctic Monkeys - Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair

Following on from the cheap thrill yet ultimately hollow experience that was ‘Brick By Brick’, Arctic Monkeys have unveiled the second taster - and first official single - to stem from forthcoming LP, ‘Suck It And See’, the terribly verbose ‘Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’.

Opening up with a spindly horror-rock riff webbing itself around Alex Turner’s hallmark lyricism (“Break a mirror, roll the dice, run with scissors through a chip pan fire fight”), a heavy drone of rhythm soon drops, ejecting ‘Don’t Sit Down…’ into a colossal being only just buffered by the chorus coos. As Nick O’Malley’s four string thud takes centre stage come the second verse, Turner proceeds to crawl over the track with an authentically perverse character before the jam is closed down with an all-out riff attack finale.

One conclusion which can most certainly be drawn from the new single is what Queens Of The Stone Age fans boys Arctic Monkeys continue to be. Following on from his production on ‘Humbug’, this starry-eyed Sheffield quartet were recently graced with QOTSA front man Josh Homme’s studio presence a second time, after the ginger giant agreed to return to provide backing vocals for ‘Suck It And See’ track ‘All My Own Stunts’. Thing is, his gargantuan presence clearly doesn’t end here. Listening to ‘Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair’, the scent of Homme’s trademark desert rock looms pungently over the soundstage - just as it did amid the Monkeys’ previous LP.

Perhaps what distinguishes this single from ‘Humbug’s’ similarly crunchy standard, however, is it’s immediate hook. Such a conclusion corresponds with Alex Turner’s recent claim ‘Suck It And See’ is “more poppy” than the band’s previous effort. Certainly, ‘Humbug’ was cold-shouldered by numerous fans due to it’s rigid and stubborn textures, whereas both tracks from ‘Suck It And See’ have proved to anchor immediately thanks to their instantly attractive hooks, rather than embedding through sheer force. Really, this is very exciting news, and suggests with the new LP, Arctic Monkeys have carried forth the ripe song writing of ‘Humbug’, while mixing it with their earlier pop immediacy, resulting in an exciting formula indeed.