Do You Wanna Know

It's been a year since Arctic Monkeys performed at the London Olympics opening ceremony, and two months on from their rousing Glastonbury headline set. The lads from Sheffield have certainly come a long way. All the way to Los Angeles, with their latest record AM recorded entirely there. The appeal of the West Coast is obvious, according to drummer Matt Helders.

“For anyone coming from England, going somewhere like that is exciting, even just the sunshine and I dunno, Big Gulp,” he laughs. “In terms of a band and recording, it's amazing – there's loads of studios, anything you want equipment-wise, any amp or drum or guitar you've ever thought of is available there, whenever you want it. It's a really useful place to record, other than, like I say, being in the sunshine and palm trees. We're still inside a lot in a dark room, but it just happens that you've got a lot of useful things around for someone making a record. The funny thing is it's the first record Alex (Turner) has written out there, and I don't think it's that obvious that it's an LA record.”

AM sees a continued progression for the four-piece into riff-heavy, moody sounds. Tunes like Snap Out Of It open with jangly piano chords, something that will ring new to the ears of many well-versed fans.

“You've probably not [heard keys on Monkeys records before], but we always threatened to do it,” says Helders. “When we were doing Humbug we did more keys and experimented a bit more with extra instruments. Then on Suck It And See, we took it back again into being a band just playing, we did it all live. There was nothing mad because we've never been a band who jams or anything, plays for hours until we find some magic – we've never worked that way. Everything is organised in a way, but we will try stuff differently with sounds as well. We don't really care what it is as long as it makes the sound that we want. This time we went back, just adding extra interesting layers to it. We weren't as precious about being able to play it live the next day. We used to be like, 'If we can't do it tomorrow then we shouldn't record it'. Same with backing vocals. Now we just want to make this record sound the best that we can, still sound like us, but a more original sound.”

Helders is no stranger to backing vocals either, his yelling voice recognisable as that which has steadily complemented Turner in the past. But how tough is it to play the drums at breakneck speed and sing in falsetto simultaneously?

“It's pretty hard, because in the studio you can do it as many times as you like and be as loud as you want,” says Helders. “It's more hard for the sound guy, because a lot of times I sing loud but falsetto, and he's gotta make it sound good without hearing lots of drums down that microphone. I think that's his job, though. In terms of our side of things, it's about the coordination and not running out of breath. I've kind of gotten used to it, though. Before I think I was just shouting so it didn't matter if I went out of tune so much!”

The song that set the mood for AM was R U Mine? originally released on 7” vinyl for Record Store Day 2012. It now sits second on the album tracklist, though that wasn't the original intention.

“I don't know if we knew it at the time; we only recorded that as a standalone single because we were doing that Black Keys tour in America. Once we'd finished touring the record, we were like, 'Well we can't do that again, playing all the same songs – we need something new'. Not even to promote, just out of fun and to play something new to people. We recorded that for that reason, and then it had such a good reaction; even today we have so much fun playing it, people really love it. We'd never really played it in Europe, only in America, so we thought it deserved more than just being a single. It ended up being a massive influence on the rest of the record, so I think it were important that it was on there. The next thing we did after that was Do I Wanna Know? and I think at first we were like, 'Let's make 12 R U Mine?s'. Throughout the album we've sort of covered the riffs side of it, but mainly the element we were most excited about was doing the backing vocal thing, and pulling it off without sounding too stupid – we're hoping.”

They need not fear, the overwhelmingly positive fan reactions are all over the internet. Helders sees it all too.

“I've seen that quite a bit, the US Tumblr. I try not to read too much about ourselves, whether it's good or bad. I don't think it's healthy to read too much of it, but if someone sends us something that's either funny or a good review or summat, I'll have a look at it. I've got Twitter as well, so sometimes you can't avoid it; people just say things and you've got to see it, but it's never that bad.”

The online fandom has also opened Helders' eyes to the younger audience Arctic Monkeys are courting.

“It's weird meeting people who were seven when the first album came out,” he admits. “Or this is the first Monkeys record they hear, and they go back and listen to the other ones. It's never-ending. Which is obviously good, but it's a bit strange sometimes. I think that's why we always find it important to do something different with every record as well. Which one they'll like more or like less, it's hard to say.”