10 Rock Albums That No One Was Asking For

For the past few years, The Arctic Monkeys have seemed to want the kind of career that David Bowie seemed to have in the ‘70s. As much as their early garage rock days may have been a welcome addition to the ‘00s rock scene, their turn towards a more retro and stoner rock vibe on albums like Humbug and AM made for something that we hadn’t seen on the charts in a while. It was a ripe time to experiment, but there’s a good chance no one was expecting Alex Turner to go the way of Richard Cheese.

Getting past the bizarre album title, this entire record is straight up lounge music for most of its runtime, making songs that are a lot more focused on just a bunch of strange keyboards sounds intermingled with tracks that sound like they should be playing in the background of some art house movie from the ‘50s.

While there are definitely a few glowing highlights on this record like the single Four Out Of Five and the swampy sounds of She Looks Like Fun, it didn’t take long for the fanbase to put up the dividing lines, with many feeling betrayed that the band seemed to leave rock and roll behind altogether. Then again, the Monkeys weren’t really trying to shun themselves from rock and roll. It was all about evolution, and this seemed like the first step towards a new version of themselves.