Track Review: Arctic Monkeys – “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”

[Domino; 2011]

The two songs we’ve heard from Suck It And See both feature wordless choruses, cavernous production and a desert rock swagger. The similarities end there. The album’s exhaustively-titled first official single is a solid improvement on “Brick by Brick,” (which I admittedly overrated in my review) and people who were displeased with the latter will find a lot more to like here. Anchored by tongue-in-cheek parables of “going into business with a grizzly bear” and “kung-fu fighting on your roller skates,” the song is a small, logical step forward from the sounds of Humbug. The main riff a colossal, lurching beast, and it will be rattling around in your skull long after the outro. As Matt Helders hinted, it’s more poppy than anything on the band’s nearly immaculate third effort, but the dense, heady atmosphere remains.

I’ve lived with “Don’t Sit Down ’Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair” for a few days now, and it has grown on me enormously. In the Zane Lowe interview on which the song premiered, Alex Turner mentioned that Suck It And See will be a blend of all of the band’s past works. Maybe this will be the album band meshes their increasingly accomplished musicianship with the heady thrills we know they’re capable of.

7/10