REVIEW AND PHOTOS: Arctic Monkeys are on indestructible form in Coventry

They always were a bit different, weren’t they?

They were smarter, sharper, tighter, wittier, that bit more urgent, more demanding of attention. But there was something else too: a sense that they existed in a slightly different dimension, a sense that they had been around forever somewhere else, and had somehow burst into our timeline.

That sense of timeless brilliance was there in their first official video (2005 didn’t actually look like that, kids). And it was there on the screens in Coventry last night, the image manipulated to resemble some soul revue from 1976. Only it was happening now.

You could call it artifice; you could look at frontman Alex Turner’s vintage Vegas styling, his retro posturing, and see a man just playing at being a legend. But after a couple of hours of simply bulletproof music, you’re left thinking he might actually be one.

They’ve released seven albums in 17 years. Some are more lauded than others, but each is notable in its own way: they were already starting to experiment and broaden their palette by their third LP, and their latest work sounds pretty much unrecognisable from their earliest. But it’s as if their career as a live band has been leading to this point: they have so much to draw from now, so many colours and textures, they can conjure any mood the moment requires. Acutely observed tales of northern nightlife and domestic travails now dance with widescreen dramas and psychedelic excursions (There’d Better Be A Mirrorball, given a colossal synth); the earthy meets the other-worldly. It’s like watching a collaboration between Ken Loach and David Lynch. It’s a miracle that it works at all, let alone that it works this well.

Perhaps it comes down to Alex Turner being an elite-level riff-writer. You sing along to the guitars at least as much as the choruses. Some are fired into your head, some ease their way in gradually. But however they get there, they stay there. Just as integral is the drumming of Matt Helders: it’s explosively propulsive yet pinpoint in its precision. All the songs share a kind of smoky piquancy; there is a wink and a knowingness to everything too, which might come across as arch were it not for the fact that that’s what sincerity looks like in Sheffield.

Those responsible for the show’s visuals get this as well. There are ironic, showbizzy touches in the lights and the designs; there are also moments you feel like you’re living in a James Bond title sequence; yet none of this feels unimaginative or derivative. Taken together with the music, the overall effect is something like indestructibility: this stuff will always be because it has always been. It’s kind of uncanny, but it’s irresistible.

All ages came for this, female and male in roughly equal number, forty-odd thousand of them. They danced and sang and yelled and screamed. Arctic Monkeys are undoubtedly the pre-eminent British band of their generation; they may be the last great British band of their kind. That they still possess such power and appeal, that they are still simultaneously straightforward and sublime, regal and relatable, surely tells us something: they always were different, and they still are.

Setlist here