His biting lyrical wit, ever-present since he sang, “There’s only new music/ So that there’s new ringtones,” on “A Certain Romance,” reached new heights of glorious Dan Bejar-esque obtuseness on Tranquility Base. It’s certainly the saddest-sounding music Turner’s put his name to since the dusky tunes he contributed to the soundtrack for Richard Ayoade’s Submarine in 2010. The Car is Arctic Monkeys’ weirdest album, and it’s their most overtly melancholy work too - like James Bond themes for a terminally depressed spy. Snatches of funk guitar unappealingly snake through the disjointed, halting orchestral pop of “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am” and the croon-y “Jet Skis On The Moat.” With rolling timpani hits and a cavernous minor-key sweep, the title track recalls the string-laden elegance of elder statesmen like Damon Albarn and Jarvis Cocker - marking the first time the forever-young Arctic Monkeys have sounded, well, kind of old. It’s also impossible not to hear The Car as a minor work compared to the impeccable anti-gravity opulence of Tranquility Base, as well as their slightest album since Whatever People Say I Am there’s an abundance of experimentation here that misses the mark as often as it directly connects. And yet, throughout these 10 songs Arctic Monkeys inhabit a place somewhere between refinement and further exploration - the first time they’ve embellished on a previously established style since 2007’s exquisite sophomore bruiser Favourite Worst Nightmare, which gave the caffeinated jangle of their star-making 2006 debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not a powerful steroid shot. The celestial anti-rock of Tranquility Base represented the band’s biggest sonic change-up to date, so when it comes to The Car it’s perfectly reasonable to expect the unexpected. When it came to 2013’s AM - which represented a fairly massive breakthrough for an already-massive band - the quartet dipped their paws in the pomade while fusing “teddy boy” imagery with arid desert rock that found Turner piling on a rakish, decidedly sexy charm. embraced humid stoner-rock textures, growing their hair long and letting a fog machine rip on tour, while 2011’s Suck It And See let the sun shine in with bright West Coast Britpop-isms. This is a band that has largely made a career out of making fairly broad stylistic shifts with every successive release for 2009’s dank Humbug, Turner and Co. There are a few key differences between The Car and its lush, decadent predecessor that we’ll get into in a bit - but first, it’s worth noting that one of the most surprising elements of Arctic Monkeys’ latest is how closely it picks up from where Tranquility Base left off. We are back to Earth.” That may be true where the subject matter is concerned, but sonically speaking, if you were hoping for a return to hard-charging normalcy… well, there’s the airlocked door. Nodding to the conceptual framework of 2018’s instant classic Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino, Alex Turner introduced his latest with the promise that “on this record, sci-fi is off the table. Intentional or not, there’s a sense of irony that the Sheffield-hailing lads’ first album in four years is called The Car the terrain that Arctic Monkeys are charting on their seventh full-length is absolutely unsuitable for a four-wheeler, or anything that doesn’t require some sort of jet propulsion. For the second album in a row, one of the world’s greatest and most unbelievably consistent rock bands have jettisoned themselves into the final frontier, diving deeper and deeper into sonic wormholes that lead thousands of miles away from anything resembling what they once sounded like. Ladies and gentlemen, Arctic Monkeys are still floating in space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |