“…with the release of a legitimate contender for Album of the Year in AM, their fifth full-length studio project, the Arctic Monkeys show only brief glimpses of the angsty bunch of Brits they were almost 10 years ago. It’s not that they’ve lost their edginess — rather it seems they’ve modified it with the benefit of maturity, both personal and artistic.” —Joe Antoshak

In the mid-2000s, in an era defined by lackluster album sales and marketing conventionality, the Arctic Monkeys strode arrogantly to the main stage of the music scene with a carton of cigarettes and a collective “Who can boss me around?” attitude — not to mention the United Kingdom’s fastest-selling debut album in history. At the time, frontman Alex Turner and company did not give a damn. Perhaps that’s why everyone else did.

But now, with the release of a legitimate contender for Album of the Year in AM, their fifth full-length studio project, the Arctic Monkeys show only brief glimpses of the angsty bunch of Brits they were almost 10 years ago. It’s not that they’ve lost their edginess — rather, it seems they’ve modified it with the benefit of maturity, both personal and artistic.

Unlike the great majority of rock bands constituting the genre at the moment, the Monkeys have never produced the same album twice. In fact, they’ve never really gotten close. From the violent, runaway-train feel of tracks on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (2006) to the more sensitive and balladic tunes on 2011’s Suck It and See, the band has added something to its arsenal with every release. With AM, it’s brought a trunk full of guns to a knife fight, creating what is quite simply its best album to date.

From the drum kit-driving opener “Do I Wanna Know” to the irresistibly grooving “Knee Socks,” Turner shows off seemingly boundless songwriting prowess. Though his lyrics are just as clever and imagery-oriented as they always have been, efforts on AM present him in a more experimental light. He now seems just as interested in the way his voice sounds as in what it’s saying. This is a new development for Turner, and it pays off big time.

The album’s themes are still largely centered on a perpetually disappointed individual’s perspective on lost love, but the cynic is now nearing 30 and inevitable maturity. Lust and inebriation continue to hold true as primary influences: On “Fireside,” Turner laments, “And I thought I was yours, forever/ Or maybe I was mistaken.” But while he is more self-aware, he still lacks the ability to right his attachment issues, as testified on “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”

In a strange twist, the most out-of-place song on the album is the one that sounds most like the Arctic Monkeys. While “R U Mine?” is by no means a weak track, it listens more like a cut from 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare than a product of this new-sounding band. This is not a mark against the record though. It’s more appropriately indicative of the strength of the Monkeys’ garden-fresh material.

The production value throughout the album is phenomenal. Turner’s vocals are frequently accompanied by slight reverb, and his and bandmate Jamie Cook’s guitar work is on point — energetic and penetrating at times, acute and severe at others. Nick O’Malley and Matt Helders, on bass and drums, respectively, round out the group’s relentlessly evolving vibe. 

The Arctic Monkeys are not the band they were seven years ago. They’re not even the band they were two years ago. They’ve traded the angular punk register with which they broke into the music scene for a thicker, bluesier sound. They’ve lived; they’ve grown up. And yet the heart of the band remains. 

It’s not that the Arctic Monkeys work obliviously in relation to where music stands at the moment; they’re simply far too focused on their own product to care. Whether AM will be viewed as their masterpiece or as the beginning of an impending golden age has yet to be seen, but one thing is fairly certain: As long as the Arctic Monkeys stay together, they’ll refuse to be pinned down for more than a year or two at most. AM is proof that Turner and his crew are still unerringly fearless toward innovation and, in turn, their own self-reinvention.