It is the first time the song has been played in four years
On Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not Alex Turner and the Arctic Monkeys managed to do something few bands achieve: to capture the essence of a generation. For Brits now in their late 20s the lyrics encapsulated their coming-of-age – as anticipation set them up and hazes ascended and they went looking for romance.
None of the album’s social commentaries were as wide-ranging in their scope and vision as their then set ender ‘A Certain Romance’. A distillation of a teenagehood of emos and chavs, Myspace and Bebo, Converse and trackies.
The song hasn’t been played by the band for a number of years, however, in keeping with the malleable nature of their recent setlists the song was played at their show Saturday night.
Alex Turner performed the track alone with a minimal drum machine loop accompanying him. Watch it here:
The song has not been played since their 2014’s ‘AM’ shows when Turner performed an acoustic rendition of the tune, and as you can see from the video, the reception from the crowd was as you might expect.
It comes after punk poet John Cooper Clarke joined the band for a performance on Friday, kicking off proceedings with a reading of his 1982 poem ‘I Wanna Be Yours’, which the band turned into a soothing, reverb-drenched masterpiece on their album AM.
You can read JOE’s review of their recent show in London’s O2 Arena here.
