The Humbug Poet
“Music with lyrics in a language you don’t understand or no lyrics at all has the power to send vehement shivers through your body. It’s almost as if the melody or something else in there has an invisible direct line to the depths of the subconscious. This interests me greatly.
– Alex Turner
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Josh Homme embodies the true quintessence of desert rock in every sense of the meaning. Born in Joshua Tree, California, and raised in the nearby Palm Desert, a smaller city of under 50k people, Homme learned quickly about the dangers of living in the desert. In one particular story he tells about a man who went for a walk after his car broke down. In this story the man doesn’t bring any water with him on his short walk through the desert and dies before he could get back to the car. The desert is to be taken seriously, and Homme is the perfect tour guide for these young Monkeys to explore its dangers.
Homme was one of the main members of the stoner rock band Kyuss of the Palm Desert Scene, that made the term “desert rock” famous world wide. Homme, wearing a red flannel shirt, is always with a cigarette between his fingers as he towers over his new studio guests, Arctic Monkeys. At muscular 6’4, he looks somewhere between a football quarterback, a Norwegian viking descendent. His slick back blonde hair, and Jim Morrison with his love for poetry, theatrics, and rare words such as “Cockalorum” (a self-important little man) which he explains to Turner as they exchange iPhone notes.
Turner appears to change drastically during his time in the desert, after spending considerable time with the American “stoner rock” pioneers. Homme who is an avid smoker, appears with a cigarette in his hand while looking across the room as he commanders the band to do another take. It was after these desert sessions that Turner first appeared to be smoking publicly, even though he never crossed the realm into a “real” smoker usually unveiled by his lack of full inhales, he has been spotted “casually smoking” in front of the camera many times. Usually appearing to suck on the cigarette as it were some fancy cigar then quickly exhaling because hey it’s bad for you.
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Alex Turner first met Josh Homme at a music festival in Belgium. Allegedly Homme bursted into the Arctic Monkeys’ dressing room yelling ‘Monkeys!’ as if he “owned the place” Turner recalls in a funny story. They immediately hit it off due to their same taste in music and movies, a mutual respect for each other’s bands, and a mutual love for interesting words and poetry.
Domino Records boss, Laurence Bell, suggested the band work with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme after finding out that’s all they play in their tour van. It’s one of the few bands everyone in the van could agree on, so they just kept them on. Beside Queens of the Stone Age, the band were also working their way through some of America’s classic bands such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and solo albums of Roky Erickson as well as his psychedelic outfit The 13th Floor Elevators.
Shortly after playing a joint show in Houston, Arctic Monkeys asked Homme to record their follow up to Favorite Worst Nightmare. Homme quickly obliged. Parts of Humbug were recorded at Joshua Tree studio, Rancho De La Luna, particularly crying lightning, potion approaching, fire and the thud, dangerous animal, among others. 12 songs were recorded in Rancho De La Luna, and 12 in New York. Fire and the Thud featured Alison Mosshart of The Kills, one of the more personal songs on the album according to Alex Turner. He penned the song about his then girlfriend Alexa Chung after she got the offer to relocate to New York for MTV. In an interview with Mojo magazine in September of 2009 he recollected “It’s the most honest song on the record. Some songs are disguises for one little thing that you wanna say. Just to tell someone something. Others are more constructed, formulaic and traditional. Show-offy. Whereas this song, is not so considered. Visceral.”
Originally it was intended that Alison Mosshart sing the song fully, and a version of her singing the entire song was recorded but never released. Turner made the last minute decision to re-sing it due to the personal nature of the lyrics about his ex girlfriend.
But Humbug wasn’t a perfect release without a stumble. Originally, “Pretty Visitors” was chosen as the 3rd single to be made into a music video, but was changed last minute to “My Propeller”. This choice proved to be a poor one as “Pretty Visitors” became much more loved by the fans, and is still being played on tours in 2018 while My Propeller was made fun of for what many fans thought was about Turner singing about his “Propeller” not working. A sexual putdown of some sort by his distractors.
Following the footsteps of Favourite Worst Nightmare in 2007, Humbug was released first in Japan, on 19 August 2009, followed by Australia, Brazil, Ireland and Germany, on 21st of August 2009 and finally released in the UK on 25th of August 2009. In the US it was released on August 24th. Several Arctic Monkeys Japanese releases had extra songs added to it. On Favourite Worst Nightmare it was Da Frame 2R and Matador, and this time on Humbug it was “Red Right Hand”, a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover. Established bands generally in Japan a few days before everywhere else to discourage importing CDs from EU & US. This is due to the fact that Japanese fans can import CDs cheaper than buying the local versions due to government regulations. Bands often have to include extra tracks in the Japanese releases to give a larger incentive to the fans to pay the higher price. Another reason is Japanese Record stores do not want to advertise an imported version of the album, and fans do not want to pay the higher price for an identical album.
Lyrics usually come to me in the morning, in the first 15 minutes of the day, or when I’m out in the middle of the night, I carry a notebook, and I’ll write a line down in a bar, then maybe the next day I’ll look at it and think, Ah, that’s interesting, I’ll put this in a song. But other times, it just says ‘John Lennon is a TV chef’ or something.
– Alex Turner talking to Vulture
“I was listening to a lot of country music when I wrote it [Cornerstone], and it had that formula where the verses always end the same way. That happens a lot in Patsy Cline tunes. I started with the line ‘I smelt your scent on the seat belt.’ In reality, I was sitting in the back of a taxi and I got this scent in my nostrils of whomever I was longing for. I may have also had the names of the pubs in mind. Not to sound like a wanker, but with that song, I had an idea and it wrote itself. I’m not sure how I ended up with the girl’s sister in the last verse, though. When I was in school, I think I probably fancied my girlfriend’s sister or something.” – A.T talking to Vulture
“My mouth hasn’t shut up about you since you kissed it. The idea that you may kiss it again is stuck in my brain, which hasn’t stopped thinking about you since well before any kiss. And now the prospect of those kisses seems to wind me like when you slip on the stairs and one of the steps hits you in the middle of the back. The notion of them continuing for what is traditionally terrifying forever excites me to an unfamiliar degree.” -AT love letter to Alexa
Speaking to the BBC the band admitted being influenced by Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Jake Thackray, John Cale, Nick Cave, Roky Erickson and The Beatles on this new album. While those are true, upon closer examination it becomes clearer that sonically and stylistically Humbug vastly draws from the ideas of Jim Morrison and The Doors, as well as Josh Homme and Queens of The Stone Age. Both of the latter acts are prominent California rock bands who were associated with pioneering the California desert sounds and vibes. And while largely influenced by those two acts Turner avoids sounding derivative or unoriginal, mostly by incorporating his sharp wit and his most fluid poetic delivery of tongue twisting lines such as Crying Lightning’s “With folded arms you occupied the bench like toothache / Stood and puffed your chest out like you’d never lost a war / And though I tried so not to suffer the indignity of reaction / There was no cracks to grasp or gaps to claw” or on Pretty Visitors: “And the bicycle wheels all struggle to move ’round/ In your muddy mind, blatantly caked and / Unwilling to wind uncooperative time /So he sits on the springs ’til the muck goes dry”. It’s as if John Cooper Clarke and Jim Morrison wrote songs together and Josh Homme and John Lennon played guitars. It’s this perfect fusion of different influences that breaks the barrier into brand new creative territory for Turner.
Humbug marks a new milestone in the band’s career as it was the first LP to be fully recorded and produced in America. Josh Homme took the band to Joshua Tree’s famed Rancho De La Luna Studio made famous by Josh Homme’s musical projects.
“We didn’t talk much on the drive, we just listened to mix-tapes we made for each other. I felt like I was their guide to the Amazon: They came to me: ‘Will you take us to the weird and the strange?’” – Josh Homme talking to Rolling Stone
Alex Turner cleverly dropping a Jim Morrison influence hint in his description of what it felt to be there at the Joshua Tree studio with Josh Homme.
“I remember getting there, being as far from home as I’d ever felt, but also very much at home. You start thinking of what are people going to think about it. But it all went away and we were able to just do this…the doors of perception swung open.” – Alex Turner speaking to Uncut
While taking breaks in between the songs, the band would gather on the studio porch and swap turns of firing air rifles into the distance and go for drinks in the nearby Pioneertown, a movie set built in the 1940s portraying a vintage USA town for Wild West films.
“Joshua Tree was different from any situation we’d ever been in before, so we felt like, ‘We can do anything,’ I think it surprised us how much we were like, ‘Wow, this is a special place.’” – Alex Turner talking to Rolling Stone
The band split the record between Homme’s Rancho De La Luna and James Ford’s work at Mission Sound Studio in Brooklyn where Turner was living at the time. There were some early concerns about the vastly different studio recording environments set on two far away US coasts and that it would produce divergent sounding songs. But the early work with Homme set the mood for the record which the band continued with Ford’s sessions. It’s truly remarkable that in the end there are no noticeable differences between the two vastly different sessions to the listener.
Josh Homme recalled first hearing the first batch of the rough unfinished demo tracks for the album and being blown away by the direction and close proximity to his own musical ambitions. “I’ll be damned, these motherf**kers want to paint landscapes.” prompting him to jump on board full heartedly. Homme always wanted to work with artists he believed are here to leave a long lasting impression, to create a classic album, one for the ages that will live long after we are all gone. He truly believed he had found that with the new Arctic Monkeys direction. Josh Homme is also credited with selling the band the idea that playing slow is harder. And would often encourage them to slow it down and experiment with new sounds and beats. And when the band were insecure or wondering if their new direction was “too weird” he would often stop them in their tracks to tell them it is in fact still Arctic Monkeys. It’s clear to see this album would never have sounded this way without Homme’s heavy hands on approach.
Josh made us believe in ourselves, really, he’s got a charm, he can persuade you to do things. We’d never done slow, heavy rock songs. It was a different world to us. I don’t know if we’d have gone there if it hadn’t been for Josh. He used to tell us, ‘It’s harder to play slow.
– Jamie Cook
“For as long as I’ve known the Monkeys, they’ve always wanted to play that most dangerous of games, which is to grow and change with each record that they made, while retaining their sense of themselves at the centre of it. It’s the most dangerous thing a band can do, and also the most necessary. If you’re lucky enough to be a musician, you have to take risks. If you risk nothing, you get nothing.
You’re constantly enticed by labels and fans to sort of mimic yourself. But you have to shut that out. Certainly, after his album with the Last Shadow Puppets, Alex was ready to grow in meters instead of in centimeters. The Arctic Monkeys were on a search for themselves, and nobody who attempts mimicry can understand that. They needed to be with someone who had pursued that, and I have always thrown myself into the fire. I also have a lot of experience blowing it, which is the key to getting things right. So we were of absolute like mind and of similar taste. When we started, we already had more in common philosophically than we understood consciously. And that understanding made for quick friends.” – Josh Homme talking to sound on sound
The band booked the first sessions in September of 2008 to officially begin work with Josh Homme who officially got reigns as the album’s co-producer in the sense that he produced half the album, and Alain Johannes, who also served as a touring member of Homme’s Queens of the Stone Age and Them Crooked Vultures, as the engineer. Homme asked the band if they want to be pushed and molded as a band or if they wanted someone who will just click record, they quickly settled on the former. The end result is a beautifully catchy pop album that has been dragged through the desert and drugged with various psychedelics along the way.
“Those prog‑rock elements like in ‘Crying Lightning’, all those weird passages tucked right in the middle of a pop single, I love the guts of that, because it is very sexy and it paints a dark and imposing picture without alienating anybody. I love how much of an infiltration that stuff is.” – Josh Homme talking to sound on sound
The makeshift house studio in the desert was mainly being run by David Catching after his co-founder Fred Drake died of cancer in 2002. Catching, who performed with The Eagles of Death Metal embodied the desert rock motto, lived at the studio while the band recorded. Each part of the house had it’s “studio purpose” as vintage guitars proudly occupied the bedrooms, living room served as the recording HQ and bathrooms were even used for certain guitar sounds.
“It’s unbelievable how good an amp sounds lying on the toilet facing the ceiling,” – Josh Homme talking to WSJ
The casual nature of the setup and it’s bare and quiet surroundings provided for a very relaxed and calming experience.
“You didn’t feel like anyone was breathing down your neck,” – Alex Turner
The album name isn’t a Christmas or Charles Dickens’ popular “Bah, humbug” reference from the novel A Christmas Carol although it would be applicable there as well.
The band’s album name Humbug actually comes from a British hard boiled candy with a soft center, usually with black and white stripes and with a peppermint flavor. This candy is most commonly found in the UK or one of it’s old colonies. The band referred to this candy as a metaphor for their current sound while referring to their old albums as Jelly Babies and Starburst.
Dickens’ usage of the word humbug indicated a bitterness or dissatisfaction with the Christmas season rather than referencing a type of candy. However, it is now common and ironic to offer Humbug candies as part of the joke in many cultures around Christmas time. Turner and the band toyed with the idea of calling the album “No Artificial Flavor” or “Dupery” (as in being duped), but opted for “Humbug” due it’s double meaning in the end.
“We were comparing our third record to this candy as opposed to the first two records perhaps being a bit softer—like Jelly Babies or Starburst,” – Alex Turner
The process of completing the Humbug lyrics was an unusual one for Turner as he lost his notebook, a brown notebook with a picture of a fox on it, in an alleged robbery which contained almost finished works for the album. Turner set out to quickly rewrite parts he could recall from memory, jotting down ideas in his Moleskines notebooks for hours. The process of trying to remember his earlier ideas in return helped him write new and fresh endings to his original lyrical ideas. In the end, the process of losing the lyrics notebook ended on a positive note as the final product shines with lyrical brilliance evoking tremendous waves of positive feedback and praise from critics and fans alike.
Alex Turner now living in New York City year around when he’s not touring, felt comfortable with the idea of not going back to England to do any of the recording.
“Crying Lightning” was chosen as the first single and debuted on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show on July 6th 2009 and made available digitally online. It debuted at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart in the first week, and the single would eventually peak at #1 on the UK Indie Chart. Shortly after the trippy music video of the band sailing through the rough sea on a dinghy boat with Turner as it’s proverbial captain. Dressed in a red turtlekneck, black coat, and long wavy hair covering part of his face, Turner yells the poetic lyrics into the storm ahead as the waves get rougher. The music video produced by Diarmid Scrimshaw for Sheffield’s Warp Films was directed by their friend, Richard Ayoade, once again. Although the music video appears to take itself much more seriously than Ayoade’s previous attempt, it does take a comedic turn towards the end as Turner rises up from the ocean to play the guitar solo. as to not take themselves too seriously, the rest of the band follows suit.
“Yeah, a bit Lord of the Rings… I think the idea was to have a very over-the-top video, with them as giants. I always think that’s quite funny in music videos, cos it’s such a pompous thing to do. Like in the Jackson 5’s ‘Can You Feel it’.” – Turner on Crying Lighting music video
The second single was selected as “Cornerstone” and was first released on November 16th 2009. The song being one of the more “pop” tunes on the album that were recorded by James Ford in NYC rather than the desert alongside “My Propeller” and “Secret Door”. Turner has repeatedly called this song one of his favorites pieces of musical and lyrical writing to date. The inspiration for the song comes from a writer Jake Thackray who had a knack for witty writing.
There is this guy called Jake Thackray and he writes these sort of narrations that are kind of humorous. In some of his live recordings he will sort of pause so that people can laugh. There is this song of his called “Lah-Di-Dah,” and it’s about all the sort of nonsense he feels he is going through now that he has agreed with this girl that they’re in love and they’re going to be married. And it’s, “And now I’ll meet your auntie and stroke her cat, and talk to your Dad about the war.” In each verse he sort of starts the same way and describes a different angle of it. And that sort of stood out to me in the way that you are always right there with him.
- AT explaining the inspiration for Cornerstone
Some of the more abstract poetic lyrics came to Turner in the middle of the night in his half awake state.
“I wrote a lot during the middle of the night. I’d wake up, jot things down, then get back to sleep. And some of them became songs about that time of day, when you’re not as alert.” – Alex Turner
And other’s more coherent thoughts came to him in the morning, such as writing Cornerstone, as he told Uncut Magazine.
“There’s something to be said for writing in the morning. At other points in the day you’re a bit more defensive. I saw it as a challenge to write something in a major key, but that wasn’t cheesy.” – Alex Turner talking to Uncut
The 10” inch release of “Cornerstone” single features some more of Turner’s brilliantly poetic tunes such as “Fright Lined Dining Room” and “Catapult” which would probably be included on the LP if the band weren’t so keen on keeping their LPs short and concise. The B-sides on “Cornerstone” once again proving that the band takes all of their releases very seriously and is not just trying to collect money by pushing out leftovers.
Richard Ayoade was once again hired to direct the band’s newest single, but this time opting for a much more simplistic low budget idea as if they spent all their money on “Crying Lightning” earlier in the year. Turner appearing in a red turtleneck sweater, iconic long hair, vintage headphones and voice recorded, looked and sang straight into the camera as he vividly expounded the details of the story of looking for a girl around town but only finding lookalikes before settling for her sister. Ayoade opted out for a single camera, continuous shot without a single cut, while maintaining a vintage 90s VHS look for the production. Even with no other band member or person appearing in the music video, it received numerous praises by media outlets for it’s original idea and execution.
Turner was also praised for his ability to carry the music video alone. The music video was nominated for NME video awards in 2010, but eventually lost to Biffy Clyro’s ‘The Captain’. The band did however win ‘Best Live Band‘ at the same awards. NME Awards are not to be taken too seriously however as Alex Turner was also nominated for ‘Hero of The Year‘ (which went to ‘Rage Against The Machine‘), while ‘Humbug’ was nominated for both ‘Best Album’ and ‘Worst Album’ at the same event, winning neither.
“I think our music’s usually got humour in it. We try to carry that over to the videos….try to make it like a non-video. But that video was definitely summat we could have only done together [with Ayoade]. I was probably still reluctant doing it even with Richard [Ayoade]. We did a version of it in his living-room one night, where I just couldn’t get through it without laughing. It was the same when we actually shot it – both cracking up, trying to keep a straight face as I did a little pirouette.” – Alex Turner talking about Cornerstone music video shoot
The band decided to follow up “Cornerstone” with “Pretty Visitors” alongside three B-Sides for a 10” release, but had a change of heart at the last moment and switched it to “My Propeller”. The decision was somewhat misguided as the song did not appear to be one of the more popular songs on the album while “Pretty Visitors” became a live favorite. The rumor started somewhere out of Germany initially that the song and particularly the lyrics “My propeller won’t spin and I can’t get it started / when are you arriving,” is an innuendo about erectile dysfunction. British magazine The Guardian was most notably harsh on the review of that song pushing the story further. Turner addressed the rumors on CBC Radio Canada and somewhat laughing the whole thing off in stride.
“If that was a euphemism, then I wouldn’t be saying that my propeller wouldn’t spin – ‘cos you wouldn’t wanna go shouting that out, would you? It’s more describing a mood more than an organ. A descent. It’s about a descent.” – Alex Turner
The video for the single came out on March 18th 2010, a few days before the 10” which came out exclusively at Oxfam charity stores. The psychedelics monotone black and grey CGI music video is attributed simply to ThirtyTwo production, a British network of creative music and media founded by Toby Slade-Baker who previously worked with Franz Ferdinand, while not publicly revealing director or producer for the video.
However, Turner and co. outdid themselves once again on the B-sides of “My Propeller” single with LP worthy songs “Don’t Forget Whose Legs You’re On” and “The Afternoon’s Hat” both of which are probably more exciting than the album opener. Calling any Arctic Monkeys release a failure however would be a false one since “Humbug” would eventually receive critical praise before capturing the #1 spots on UK Album Charts, #1 on US Independent, and #1 on Irish Albums, as well as going Platinum in the UK.
The band would be praised for taking risks and going into the desert to work with Homme which would be touted as the pre-requisite to make their next few albums that were influenced by “Humbug” while veering off in their own creative directions.
The album was officially released on August 24th ahead of the ban’d Reading and Leeds Festival Appearance. The change in the band’s approach to music is also evident in their choice of Album cover. For the very first time the band opted to be included on the cover. The photo taken by the New York based fashion photographer, Guy Aroch, at the band’s wrap up sessions at Electric Lady Studios in New York City. The psychedelic mood of the album is supported by the photo which shows fading mirror images of the band members.