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Arctic Monkeys with Smith Westerns
MacEwan Hall
Thursday, September 29 - Thursday, September 29

More in: Rock / Pop

It’s a story of grisly mob mentality — young slummers strung out on a toxically flimsy economy, flaunting their law-breaking. “I do like the appeal of really over-the-top gangsta rap. I suppose it’s kinda exotic in a way,” says Matt Helders, drummer for British indie darlings the Arctic Monkeys, of the glorified gun-toting poets that inspired his band before they broke big. Instead of witnessing that kind of street brutality, Helders has always listened to gritty street testimonials with cushy hi-fi headphones in the cozy U.K. suburb of Sheffield.

“We always related to people listening to our music who don’t really know our accents or what certain lyrics are. That’s the same as us listening to gangsta rap, you kind of find out how things are. And that’s the interesting bit, when you find out what a 404 is or a 187 means,” he says, referring to rap slang for missing and murder respectively.

Helders and his fellow Monkeys spat their own unique urban, or at least suburban, vernacular on everything from the title of their latest album, Suck it and See (U.K. slang for “give it a try,”) to early deep cuts like “Mardy Bum.”

“Terms like that are local to Sheffield, most parts of England don’t use ’em or don’t even know ’em,” he says, before elaborating on what a mardy bum actually is. “Like, yer girlfriend is irrationally upset with ya. Ya haven’t really done anything in particular, she’s just in a bad mood that day, then you’d call her a mardy bum. Doesn’t have to be a girl either, could be anyone. It’s like people for a period of time that are a bit down in the dumps, but not for any reason.”

In the same way that rap laureates versed people like Helders in American street dynamics, he and his bandmates used their Sheffield jargon to immerse fans in a new world. That distinct sound made their debut album the fastest selling ever in the U.K.’s chart history back in 2006 — a strategy that was nearly accidental, a scheme they almost failed to hatch.

“The first things we recorded, our first ever gigs, I don’t think we did keep our accent that much,” Helders says of the Monkeys’ now trademark slang-filled singing method. “I think it was easier that way because it’s what you heard on the radio, singing that sounded like an ‘American accent’.… I suppose it was a way of hiding who we really were as well. But then after a bit we were like, ‘Let’s sing in our own accent and see how that works.’ I think that’s probably what gave it its charm straight away.”

As a backing vocalist, Helders has always helped frontman and singer Alex Turner capture the cadence of their hometown’s everyday conversation with lyrics that were jumbled and jammed and shouted in a rushed gasp on early hits like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor” and “Fluorescent Adolescent.” Now, he echoes Turner at a far lesser tempo on throbbing fresh singles like “Don’t Sit Down (’Cause I Moved Your Chair),” and their latest album’s title track.

“I don’t know why that came about,” Helders says of reinforcing Turner’s Sheffield-style chants. “I probably fancied myself a bit of a singer and thought ‘I’ll have a go at that.’”

But it was behind the drum kit, and not a microphone, that Helders stirred up a true chaser to Turner’s oddly intoxicating singing style.

“I think I’ve always had a different approach to drumming that’s not necessarily just sitting there and keeping time,” he says of his technique, adding that Dr. Dre-styled half-beats were a huge early influence. “Ya know, have a few tasteful features in there, but without showing off, probably at first ’cause I couldn’t show off, I didn’t have enough skills.… John Bonham’s quoted as saying ‘it’s important to be original rather than show how technically good you are.’

“I think it is probably harder to hold back in a way. Anybody can learn to do fast fancy fills and stuff, but the art of it is knowing when to use them.”