Arctic Monkeys Humbug (Domino) Spelling out the title of a song in its lyrics is a sign of a band bereft of ideas. Sadly, this is how the Arctic Monkeys inauspiciously begin their long-awaited third album, a set that offers inspiration mainly from its chief collaborator, Josh Homme of California's dark and seething Queens of the Stone Age. In short supply are the Arctics' cutting wit and spiky stutter punk. In their place is a largely disappointing mixture of crooning and done-it-before guitar chops. Even the band's once-biting lyrics have been tamed. Homme's sinister desert blues does most to lift Humbug out of the ordinary. The problem the Arctics have is that between albums No2 and this, they were preoccupied with side projects that appear to have elbowed out their once-unassailable youthful charm and replaced it with a pompous new aesthetic. Closer The Jeweller's Hands could have been lifted straight from singer Alex Turner's 2008 collaborative effort Last of the Shadow Puppets, an overblown and incredibly boring account of two lads' (the Rascals' Miles Kane being the second) unfathomable belief that they are Scott Walker. Dance Little Liar is the best track on the album simply because of Homme's keening fretwork; had it not been for Turner's scratchy vocals, this could have been a Queens track. Homme did it this time, but ultimately the Arctics will have to come to their own rescue if they are not to become another entry in the We-Pissed-Our-Early-Promise-up-the-Wall book of rock.