‘Very good,” Alex Turner exhales after delivering the final crunching note of Teddy Picker, hitting the nail on the head. The Arctic Monkeys frontman, dressed like a Laurel Canyon troubadour in a wide-collared denim shirt and blazer, his shagpile barnet falling towards a pair of black-lensed aviators, has barely said another word in the opening half hour of the band’s first stadium tour, preferring instead to conduct a storm of rock music that’s as surprising as it is thrilling in its brutish simplicity.
Released last autumn, the group’s seventh album The Car suggested that this run of shows might hit a few speed bumps. Its songs – an ornate, string-led mix of spy caper jazz-pop and needling ballads – required puzzling out, and perhaps wouldn’t be suitable for deployment in venues of this size.
