Arctic Monkeys' Humbug - 10 Years On: Ranking The Tracks From Worst To Best
5. Pretty Visitors
If "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" and "Favourite Worst Nightmare" were rocket-propelled journeys into the whims and wishes of adolescent hearts, Humbug was a sleeker, slower journey into the furthest reaches of the consciousness. Its prevailing air of melancholy and sensuality appear to reflect this, with tracks slowed down in turn.
"Pretty Visitors" is the very obvious exception to this more ethereal ambience, a lighting storm cutting through the rest of the album's gently immersive rain. It's here that drummer Matt Helders' legendary chops come to the fore as he beats his drum skins into oblivion in a vain attempt to keep up with Turner's tongue-twisting rhyme.
Humbug's ninth number again makes prominent use of the organ and its vocals speed by at one hundred miles an hour above crunching stop-start guitars that hark back to the fizzing intensity of the group's earlier work.
It's still a live favourite ten years on, but it takes a very skilled fan to shout all the words back in time!