Marcel Winatschek

Brick by Brick, Something Loosens

Brick by Brick landed around the time Arctic Monkeys were starting to sound less like the kids who wrote Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and more like a band that had spent real time in the American desert listening to Josh Homme records. The song has that looseness to it—unhurried, a little stoned, the guitars leaning rather than driving. Alex Turner delivering lines like he already knows how they’ll land. Not the sharpest thing in their catalog, but it has a specific late-afternoon quality I keep returning to.