Album: Arctic Monkeys, AM (Domino)

The third album of Arctic Monkeys’ Los Angeles sojourn is a significant improvement on both Humbug and Suck It and See, suggesting they’ve found a more satisfying rapprochement with the classic rock that tends to come with the territory over there.

The crunching slow stomp of “Do I Wanna Know?” sets the tone: here and on tracks such as “One For the Road” and “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”, they grind out a predatory, lurching funk-rock, while Alex Turner’s streams of deadpan demotic imagery pile metaphor upon alliteration and comic aside in a manner clearly indebted to John Cooper Clarke – whose droll “I Wanna Be Yours” closes the album in a slow, miasmic ballad version.

Download: Do I Wanna Know?; Snap Out Of It; One For the Road; I Want It All