New track There’d Better Be a Mirrorball holds great promise for Arctic Monkeys, who return right where they left off after Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. To call their work a maturing would be rude, but it does feel like one. Another step away from the harsh guitars and club-ready anthems that would dominate the independent scene for years to come. No, it is not a likely foray for Alex Turner and company, they don’t appear to have much interest in it, if There’d Better Be a Mirrorball is anything to base that thought off of. The same orchestral pieces that blessed audiences on their 2018 album, but with a delicacy that was arguably absent from parts of their recent work.
A track circling the suited role of the romantic fool, the mood it sets and the riffs that can be pulled from it. Turner croons his way through a touching, slower track that feels very piano dependent. There’d Better Be a Mirrorball is a confident piece, as expected, but it is a confidence that is reassured by its singer. Vocal crispness, taking on new octaves and crooning away with great beauty. The lack of thrashing guitars or even a noticeable bassline is a wonderful exclusion that allows for pure focus on Turner’s lyrical takings. There’d Better Be a Mirrorball will be bogged down by the word “development”, and at some points, rightly so. It is a very developmental period. At what point does that period become the norm?
It is not as though Arctic Monkeys have been making anything of Brianstorm-like pace recently. There is the off chance that this is the new normal for the band. A permanent change of pace, an exciting one too. “I threw the rose tint back on the exploded view,” would not work as a line if it were shored up with intense drumming and screeched vocals. There is a desired reservation to the lyrics here, beautiful poetry that flows through Turner’s work. He is one of the modern greats, and There’d Better Be a Mirrorball, if anything, cements him as a great writer and a person who knows the powerful moves he can make with lyrical takes. It is the inevitable remnants of Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino, the fallout spilling over. They are not trying again, but they are doing more of it.
When Turner said he was bringing Arctic Monkeys back to Earth, it appears he meant back to the same space and place Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino was founded. Rightly so. It is a sound that proved controversial the first time around because it was so far removed from what Arctic Monkeys had previously understood. Expectedly moving and smart, There’d Better Be a Mirrorball is a promising development that lends itself to the core strengths Arctic Monkeys have been shoring up for years now. If The Car is anything like There’d Better Be a Mirrorball, then Arctic Monkeys are back on to a top form they never left.
