They made it, then. After an edgy, will they won’t they week that began with them pulling a gig due to Alex Turner’s bout of laryngitis on Monday, Arctic Monkeys arrived on the Pyramid Stage buoyed by a palpable sense of relief from the crowd.
This build-up added a sense of drama to what would have otherwise been the most reliably great headline slot of the weekend. Word on the site is that Elton John will be bringing on 12 guests with him in a show that, he says, has been designed specifically for Glastonbury. How Guns N’ Roses go down, meanwhile, remains to be seen: it could go either way.
But Arctic Monkeys? They can just turn up and do exactly what they’ve been doing every night on the tour in support of The Car all year. Aside from the addition of the opening Sculptures of Anything Goes – a huge highlight of said seventh album, if not exactly a barnstormer – this was pretty much the exact same set they did over three nights at Emirates Stadium last weekend: the reliable opening salvo of Brianstorm into Don’t Sit Down Cos I’ve Moved Your Chair into Teddy Picker into Crying Lightning – all of which featured in the first half an hour of their last Glastonbury headline set, back in 2013 – wheeled out once more to great effect.
Turner remains an almost confrontationally aloof presence: saying very little, looking very good, doing his swaggering crooner thing for, it at times feels, his own entertainment above anyone else’s. The songs, he seems to be suggesting, can speak for themselves.
Not for him the bar band exuberance that so characterised the Foo Fighters’ earlier surprise set. This is a show that somehow feels both uncompromising and crowdpleasing. For every Mardy Bum there is a Pretty Visitors: a song from 2009’s Humbug that, you suspect, would not make it onto many fans’ fantasy Monkeys setlist.
Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? and Four Out of Five may not seem like the most natural big setting singalongs, but in the flesh they work: the crowd word-perfect all the way to the back, shuffling along to the downbeat hip hop bounce of the former and the lounge lizard groove of the latter.
Do I Wanna Know? is – of course – enormous, and more tailor made for settings such as this. The encore of John Cooper Clarke cover I Wanna Be Yours (it’s big on TikTok, OK?), then the longed-for I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor and R U Mine? brought things to a high octane close and sent the assembled off to attend to other business with smiles on their faces.
Having said all that, this was not a Glastonbury set that will live especially long in the memory. There was some alarm in the build-up, but ultimately no surprises. Arctic Monkeys have earned the right to do what the hell they like, and did. Frustrating though it may be to some, there is something endearing about this kind of take it or leave it attitude: a confidence-slash-arrogance that is a dying trait in music. They will probably be turning up in another ten years, doing exactly the same show. Because they and pretty much only they can.
