From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"The View from the Afternoon" is a song by Arctic Monkeys originally released 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.
[edit] Themes
The themes of "The View from the Afternoon" are based around observations of behavior on an excursion into local nightlife. In a repeated verse, the singer comments on the expectation that an evening being enjoyable will likely lead to disappointment. The singer 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; text messaging through the lock/unlock function on a Nokia mobile phone; "two for the price of one" drinks promotions, which the singer explicitly blames for the drunkenness of the sender and his predicament.
[edit] Composition
Alex Turner:
| “ |
“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.”[1] |
” |
[edit] Music video
The video[2] is based around a young male in a parka jacket playing the drum part of the song in the middle of a courtyard between blocks of flats. Then, there is a sequence of surreal elements; a Indian schoolgirl walks past wearing plastic devil horns; a running fox; three men are curious about the lone drummer and try to attract his attention while he ignores them; he is fed milk by the schoolgirl and then a brief shot in colour of him washing himself in shallow water; a shot of man in the dark wielding a baseball bat; a brief shot of the moon which then explodes into pieces. Finally the man with the bat comes near to him 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 shot in black and white. It was filmed near Parkhill flats in the Arctic Monkeys' native city of Sheffield, directed by W.I.Z. for Factory Films. The video is analogous to the Hindu story of Shiva (dancer, drummer and master of creation) and his devoted girl who revitalizes and pays tribute to him by bathing him in milk and honey (viewed by the Hindu religion as sacred) and his battle against those who wish to destroy all that is good.
[edit] Trivia
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.
[edit] References
