So very surprised right now, in the most pleasant of ways: the album kicks ass. Definitely their best since Whatever People Say I Am. Why? This is a fucking pop album, and it turns out that these boys are terrific at pop songs, as evidenced by Cornerstone, my favorite AM song. The hooks here are mammoth, the production is great, and Turner's voice is slyer than ever.
Gotta say, what holds this album back is the rather melody-free rockers, all of which feel like filler to me in the greater context of this really awesome Beatlesque record. Brick By Brick (lame Queens of the Stone Age b-side), Don't Sit Down (really repetitive, lacks a chorus) and All My Own Stunts (pleasant but, again, never really takes off) are the three I don't care for, but everything else is awesome. So much better than Humbug, which was a minute shorter but feels a half hour longer; SIAS is so much more lithe, which is probably because of that whole "fuck it, we'll do it live" approach they took to recording it.