Hold the phone and forget the Engelbert Humperdinck comparisons: Arctic Monkeys still rock.
A band whose Minneapolis debut in 2007 remains one of the wildest, most frenzied First Avenue shows ever seen by this reviewer, the British rockers' ability to still light up a crowd like a Roman candle was unusually questionable going into this weekend's pair of sold-out concerts at the Armory.
Arctic Monkeys' latest album, "The Car," is one of the biggest musical duds of the past year. Full of mellow balladry and melodramatic crooning more befitting a stuffy hotel lounge than a sweaty punk-rock club, the quartet's seventh album can be held up as Exhibit A for when singers in good rock bands should split off and make solo records if they get too indulgent with the sound of their own voices or bored with their old band's tried-but-true formulas.
The frontman in question here, Alex Turner, hit the stage for Saturday's second of two Armory gigs wearing a stylish suit with rolled shirt cuffs and looking like he just stepped out of a Gucci ad. He turned on his sleek crooner voice to start the show, too.
The 37-year-old vocalist sounded like a cross between Bryan Ferry and Bill Murray's old "SNL" character Nick the Lounge Singer in the slow-bobbing opening song "Sculptures of Anything Goes."
"How am I supposed to manage my infallible beliefs?" Turner rather fittingly sang as 8,000 fans — who waited nine years for another Minnesota gig, then waited 3½ hours from the time doors opened — kept waiting for the band to finally kick into gear.
Fortunately, that opening song was only one of three from "The Car" in Saturday's set list. Friday's show was also light on tracks from the new album. The kickoff dates to the band's long-awaited U.S. tour featured largely the same songs both nights, but in a different order.
On Night 2, Turner and his bandmates immediately turned to their more devilish and higher-revving sounds of old in the second number, "Brianstorm." A highlight from their 2007 sophomore album, it showed off the band's often madcap, twisty-turvy time changes and choppy guitar riffs as Turner returned to his more snarling, manic way of singing.
Have the Monkeys been doing that type of thing too long or too predictably? Maybe from Turner's perspective, but clearly not in the minds of Twin Cities fans who've only gotten to see Arctic Monkeys perform a handful of times.
The 8,000 or so audience members got especially excited a few songs later with another '07-era blaster, "Teddy Picker." Most galvanizing of all were the many songs from the band's breakout 2013 album, "AM," which were peppered throughout the 95-minute performance, starting with "Snap Out of It" and peaking with the creepy-crawly romp "Knee Socks."
At least the lead single from the new album, the elegantly swooning "There'd Better Be a Mirror Ball," was warmly received deep into the set. In what seemed like a cheeky twist in the staging, the band refrained from using an actual mirror ball during that song and instead had one spinning to light up the room during the next one, the slow-building rouser "505."
The other new one in Saturday's set, "Body Paint," made for a bloated, Bowie-copping pre-encore finale, but the fellas more than redeemed themselves in the three-song encore by finishing with two of their brattiest and hardest-blasting fan favorites, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" and "R U Mine?"
The Monkeys' choice of opening acts for this tour was a sure hint that they still intended to put on a fiery set: Fontaines D.C., a regular-joe-looking quintet from Ireland, delivered the kind of attention-grabbing, full-tilt warmup set that a headliner would not want to follow if it did not intend to bring its A-game.
From its first tune "A Hero's Death" to the crescendoing "Boys in the Better Land," the Fontaines showed off their slyly repetitive and bleak but blistering blend of U.K. post-punk. For their closer, they put a fun twist on this year's single, "Jackie Down the Line," by mixing in the first few bars of local heroes the Replacements' "Unsatisfied" to start it off. What teases, but also what a great teaser overall to hopefully many more Twin Cities gigs by the Irish youngsters.
