As Arctic Monkeys gear up for their anticipated seventh album The Car (due 10/21 via Domino), they played their first headlining US show of 2022 last night (9/22) at Brooklyn's Kings Theatre, a gorgeous venue and a relatively intimate one for Arctic Monkeys' standards. They made the live debuts of three songs from the album, including the recently-released lead single "There’d Better Be a Mirrorball," as well as "Body Paint" and "Mr. Schwartz," and also played "I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am" from the new record. Plus, they played tons of fan favorites from all over their career. Here's an excerpt of Erica Campbell's 5-star review for NME:
Moments after the band walks onto the stage to the applause of 3,000 punters, the mood is set. “Don’t get emotional, that ain’t like you / Yesterday’s still leaking through the roof”, Alex Turner sings to the delight of onlookers. It’s the first time the band has performed the song live, yet the audience sings along to every word of ‘There’d Better be A Mirroball’, hitting each note of the sultry track as if it’s a worn-in single. As the track’s title rings through the historic theatre at the final refrain, a massive disco ball lowers from the ceiling, transforming the Brooklyn venue with the flickering lights of a ’70s lounge.
[...] The evening feels like evidence of a few truths. The first being that without cellphones, you can convince a crowd to be present for a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The second being that through their discography, the Sheffield band have slowly embodied a sort of timelessness, not just in their homages to retro sounds, but in the way each era of their music, with its unmatched lyricism and refusal to rest on its laurels, somehow connects to seamlessly to the next.