There are few question marks remaining over Arctic Monkeys and their place among the best British acts of all time, at this stage. Few bands reinvent themselves to the extent that they have across their discography and fewer still manage to pull it off. That said, after AM (their fifth album) marked a second peak in their popularity back in 2013, the subsequent releases Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and most-recently The Car have been a bit too leftfield or subdued for some. How do you translate all of this into a live show successfully?
The answer, it turns out, is to put on a show much more crowd-pleasing than those creative-but-less-immediate albums might suggest. There's more from AM than The Car crammed into this setlist, and every era from their history is well-represented. It's an approach that suggests a keen awareness of the need to strike the right balance between new and old.
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A word first for The Hives, who played before Alex Turner & co took to the stage. The support act slot for one of these shows typically falls into two categories; the upcoming act learning the ropes on the stage or the experienced hands with bangers aplenty. The Hives fall very comfortably into the latter category, showmen in a much more in your face way than the Arctic Monkeys, but with a hatful of 'oh, I know this!' hits act as the ideal warm-up.
Not to be outdone, Arctic Monkeys take to a sunny stage with and from Brianstorm through to A View From the Afternoon, it looks as if they've every intention of showing off their very highest peaks. There's little in the way of standard stadium show bells and whistles - just tunes and Alex Turner's ever-so-slightly divisive onstage persona.
The middle of the set is built out of some of both their sludgier (Do I Wanna Know? My Propeller) material along with the more immediately beautiful (Cornerstone, Mardy Bum - unearthed especially for the UK leg of their tour).
While some of the new material hasn't landed with everyone, it speaks volumes about their confidence in those tracks that the magnificent Body Paint is chosen to close the main set rather than the perhaps more obvious 505 which comes before it. Side-by-side, they showcase Turner's lyricism at its finest, despite coming 15 years apart.
An encore of Sculptures of Anything Goes, a high point of their newer material, I Bet You Look Good On the Dance Floor and the usual R U Mine? to end things feels like the perfect blend of beginning, middle and newest for the band. It captures the moments they grabbed our attention, reminded us well their tunes can still land and the quieter brilliance of latter material perfectly.
Arctic Monkeys ultimately shunned the more obvious paths you would expect from a band playing in a stadium and it just felt right for them. In working through plenty of classics and crowd-pleasers along with the more thoughtful new material, essentially playing a greatest hits set, they made sure that this was a treat for everyone.
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