Arctic Monkeys 5/17/2007

Arctic Monkeys
Electric Factory
May 17, 2007

My view from the afternoon of seeing the Arctic Monkeys tonight was nonplussed particularly because no one was interested in going to the show with me. Nuts to them. They missed an outstanding performance.
My diminished expectations coming into the Electric Factory stemmed from having seen the Arctic Monkeys about a year ago at the Starlight Ballroom. At the time, the Monkeys were riding the crest of a hype wave that I was certain would go to their young heads. Days after the AM show, I saw Clap Your Hands Say Yeah suck out loud at the TLA after rocking the First Unitarian Church a few months earlier. The flat and uninspired TLA performance was a disappointment given CYHSY’s DIY success and blog appeal. Overachievers please try harder.
But back to the Arctic Monkeys’ Thursday night show at the Electric Factory. The band completely dispelled my cynicism with a very tight, 80-minute set punctuated with a rousing “Fake Tales of San Francisco” that had the whole auditorium dancing.
Yet for a sold out show, the floor seemed sparsely populated. The front was packed with adolescents (as expected for an all-ages show), but on the fringes there was space for the chaperones and parents to dance, stretch, and check text messages. It was kind of cute seeing families bond to a Brit rock soundtrack.
The audience was enthusiastically polite and no one seemed to mind the lack of an encore as they filed out when the house lights and exit music came on.