Arctic Monkeys: 10 Underrated B-Sides (That Deserved To Be Album Tracks)
8. Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend (Brianstorm, 2007)
Arctic Monkeys recorded so many songs while putting together their sophomore outing Favourite Worst Nightmare that they had gems songs for a whole other record.
One of the best tracks left out the from the album is Brianstorm's B-Side Temptation Greets You Like Your Naughty Friend, whose stripped-back instrumentation and rhythmical variations look toward the musical experimentation of Humbug while giving Turner's voice plenty of room to shine, as he snarls like a friend on the end of the phone asking you to get up to no good.
"The only roads are cul-de-sacs" concisely captures the suffocation of suburbia that underpins Favourite Worst Nightmare, while "I don't ever want to hate you / So don't show me your bed" recalls the doomed relationships which run throughout the record. Temptation Greets You would have been perfect towards the end of the album, wedged between the similarly sparse If You Were There, Beware and The Bad Thing, sowing the seeds of the affair teased in the latter song.
We probably could have done without the Dizzee Rascal feature, though ...