The View from the Afternoon

"The View from the Afternoon"
Song

"The View from the Afternoon" is a song by Arctic Monkeys originally released as the opening track on the band's first album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not in January 2006. It was also the lead track on the Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? EP. This release had an accompanying video. Although never released as a single the song is a staple of live concerts by the band.

Themes

The themes of "The View from the Afternoon" are based around observations of behaviour on an excursion into local nightlife. The song opens with the lines "Anticipation has a habit to set you up/For disappointment in evening entertainment but". Vocalist Alex Turner comments on the expectation that an evening that will be enjoyable will likely lead to disappointment; the line could also serve a comment on the massive hype surrounding the album in the UK press before release and several critics and fans have suggested this was intentional by Turner. The song describes various scenes; a group of meretricious females who have rented a limousine for a fancy dress party; a gambler who has won and then lost the jackpot on a fruit machine; and "two-for-one" drinks promotions. The chorus describes a drunk club-goer sending romantic text messages ("verse and chapter sat in her inbox") on a Nokia mobile phone which is only interpreted by the receiver as evidence he had drank a lot; Turner noting "you can pour your heart out but her reasoning will block all what you send her after nine o'clock". The lyrics, along with many on Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, criticise the culture of the nightlife described in the song, in a sarcastic and deriding tone.

Composition

Alex Turner said "This is one of the last songs written for the album. There's nothing clever, it's just about anticipating the evening, finding comfort in familiarity and the fact that you know you're bound to send a daft message or something before the sun comes up. I think I've stopped doing that now." The lyric "you can never beat the bandit, no" refers to the same fruit machine that the Reverend and the Makers sing about on the song Bandits. Both of them describe losing out to the fruit machine.

Music video

The video is based around a young man in a parka jacket playing the drum part of the song in the middle of a courtyard between blocks of high rise flats. A sequence of surreal elements is interspersed throughout: a schoolgirl walks past wearing plastic devil horns; a running fox; three men trying to attract the attention of the drummer who ignores them; the drummer is fed milk by the schoolgirl and then a brief shot in colour of the man floating on his back in shallow water. The music stops, and it is revealed that his drumming has caused his hands to bleed. Next, there is a shot of a man in the dark wielding a baseball bat, then a brief shot of the moon which appears to explode and then the man in the dark struggling to lift his bat. Finally, the man with the bat comes near to the drummer and is about to strike him, but the audio stops and we see a last shot of the male being showered in what could be rain or the fragments of the moon. The video is perhaps based on the story of the Buddha. He was said to have meditated under a tree for days. While he meditated, devils came to seduce and sabotage him, but he resisted. Seeing the Buddha starve himself in order to attain nirvana, a woman gave him milk to quench his thirst. The video is shot in black and white and was filmed near Park Hill flats in the Arctic Monkeys' native city of Sheffield, directed by W.I.Z. for Factory Films. It was also partially filmed later in the courtyard of Bromyard House, Ledbury Estate in Peckham, South East London. A tattoo of the three intersecting circles sigil adopted by John Bonham, the drummer of Led Zeppelin, can be seen on the man's right wrist.

External links

• "The View from the Afternoon" music video on YouTube