Arctic Monkeys, Don Valley Bowl 10.6.11
Reet then! The tent, the ridiculously overpriced beer, the shit filled porta-cabins and the smell of burning food in the fresh air – this may as well be the NME Tent at Leeds Festival circa 2007 for all it’s worth.
Why not though? Alex Turner and company could just reel out the hits of Suck it and See – which is what they do at certain points via the heavy Homme produced grunge of Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair and Brick By Brick which both seamlessly rip Don Valley Bowl a new one – but tonight’s a greatest hits show.
“Let’s start frum t’top” Alex Turner says before hammering into A View from the Afternoon and Crying Lightning, an electrifying surge of ritualistic energy hammering back and forth from a council estate, desolating everything before it as the cries of “Thunder” jolt into the skies like the foursome are summoning a thunder God from the skies above.
A set for two hours long always has the danger of getting a little dull in the middle but the inclusion of a slower Mardy Bum and When the Sun Goes Down turns Turner into Yorkshire’s own Morrissey – a pied piper leading the masses into a charming observational sing-along and from those small beginnings in cramped pubs, closing song A Certain Romance shows that you don’t need a ginger haired producer to beef up your sound for it to ring so valiantly through a crowd of thousands.
Alex Yau
