Rumours had been flying around all week about who would replace Arctic Monkeys as Friday night’s Glastonbury headliner. The band cancelled a date in Dublin earlier in the week, citing Alex Turner’s bout of laryngitis, and everyone from Pink to the Foo Fighters was cited, reliably (or so everyone claimed), as being primed to step in if they pulled out. But there was not a hint of a hoarse throat when Turner and co swaggered onto the stage dressed like they were ready to run kilos of cocaine in a 70s thriller: they were powerful and clever and overly self-aware.
It began somberly with “Sculptures of Anything Goes” and the crowd didn’t quite know what to do with itself. Turner, sunglasses on, was unbothered by the lukewarm reception as the song ramped up to its orchestrally dramatic conclusion, singing about coffee mornings with retired spies and lifting the mic stand above his head. From there, they launched straight into a rager – “Brianstorm” – and it was like uncorking a shaken-up bottle of champagne: flares coloured the darkening sky, people leapt on each others’ shoulders and everywhere was suddenly completely alive. It felt like a patented Glastonbury Moment.
The pattern of sombre new stuff followed by absolute classic indie disco banger continued as the band juggled their artier material with the older, more raucous songs that a Friday night crowd at Glastonbury really wants to hear. It was fun to hear people try to match Turner’s lowest register on “Don’t Sit Down Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”, which also contained a riff so meaty that you could almost mistake this bunch of Sheffield scoundrels for a cheesy stadium rock band.
In fact, there is something deeply cheesy about Arctic Monkeys in 2023, mostly down to Turner’s theatrics, which are stylised and endearingly uncool. After “Four Stars Out Of Five”, he suddenly deeply intoned the word “Effective” for no obvious reason. It was jarring and hilarious and one of only about 40 words he actually said to the crowd. Then, a moment later, “Very effective.” OK!
The songs from 2023 album The Car were beautiful: “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” (and by the way, there was) was swooning and conversational, and on “Body Paint”, they made being an absolute arse sound sweeping and romantic. When Turner sang the line, “And if you’re thinking of me, I’m probably thinking of you,” he did it with a sneer.
It’s difficult to keep a rowdy crowd entranced with delicate, wordy songs when you know that really what they want to hear is a song you released in 2005, and at times it felt like a bit of a chore to indulge them – a headline Pyramid Stage set doesn’t play by the rules of a touring show, and there is little patience for deep cuts. It felt pointed when they started the encore with “I Wanna Be Yours”, and by the end of the song the tension in the crowd was unbearable.
Everyone was primed, everyone was waiting for it – and finally there it was. “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor”, two minutes and 53 seconds of indie disco perfection, now imbued with thousands of people’s memories and experiences. The release was huge. The reaction was wild. The Arctic Monkeys did a good job of acting like they didn’t mind playing it. Effective. Very effective.