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Arctic Monkeys Listen to Rolling Stones in Space (and Sound Like It) on ‘I Want It All’

Arctic Monkeys, "I Want It All," 'AM,' stream, Rolling Stones, "2000 Light Years From Home"

“Leave me listening to the Stones’ ‘2000 Light Years From Home,'” Alex Turner sings, backed by falsetto harmony, near the midpoint of Arctic Monkeys’ “I Want It All.” He’s alluding to a track from the Rolling Stones’ 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, but the line would work almost as well without the quotation marks. Like other tracks shared so far from their Josh Homme-assisted September 10 LP AM (one of SPIN’s 50 Fall Abums That You Gotta Hear), this one is brawny, glam-stomping rock’n’roll with the cavernous space of, well, space.

The refrain is the title, and the fuzzy full-band interplay is fully locked-in, with handclaps and bluesy lead-guitar licks. An undercurrent of lusty heartache that runs through fellow AM bruisers “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?,” “Do I Wanna Know?,” and “R U Mine?,” turns up again here: “Ain’t it just like you to kiss me / And then hit the road?” go the lines right before the one quoted above. They want the galaxy, and they want it now, and they also wouldn’t mind if their romantic interest came back sometime. “Shoo-wop, shoo-wop,” Turner repeats at the bridge, making girl-group yearning something rivetingly his own.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=7Km9_gF9hE8%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded