Arctic Monkeys – The Car Review

Spies and sly trickery are at the heart of Arctic Monkeys’ latest album, The Car, a deeply moved and heavy-set filter for the late 1960s and early 1970s of rock and pop music. An atmosphere and scope to this extent featured on their previous album, Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino, and there are remnants of that fallout on The Car. An American-influenced album, or rather, an influence of themes that are drawn on from those that broke it big in the United States. Elton John and David Bowie spring to mind in small pockets for those new singles, but it is broadly found in the B-Side excellence throughout The Car.

Fundamentally, though, Arctic Monkeys have changed little between this and Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino. For those that hated the latter and loved the former, there must be a degree of self-reflection. Whether it is on the Bennie and the Jets piano keys struck like a defibrilator, a shock to the system, on There’d Better Be a Mirrorball or the wailing 1970s pastiche so closely settling in on The Car’s second single, Body Paint, there has to be some reflection on the style Arctic Monkeys now hold. That wah guitar on I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am and its stylistic choice, similar to that of Jimi Hendrix, cannot be ignored. This is the perfect blend for those that found Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino too artsy and Humbug too heavy.

That wah guitar features on Jet Skis On The Moat too, another major overhaul of stylistic change for the band whose work has effectively moved on from the thrashy guitar of Fluorescent Adolescent. Baroque pop strikes through once more. Introspective moments that have lyrical hang-ups as broad as they are interspersed with spy-like themes. Smoky rooms, keypads and a real, stylistic charge comes through. They are solid tracks, but like Body Paint, will take some time to settle in. Those acoustic strokes on the title track are not just emotionally raw but confirm a permanent change in tone for Arctic Monkeys, that same, polarizing effect of Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino. It is as broad and inconclusive and intense as that piece. Sculptures of Anything Goes offering a moody, slow approach to the battles of history in Turner’s lyrics should be one of many A-Side signs to that. Those that don’t like, as Turner calls it, the “horrible new sound” had best turn the other cheek.

Orchestral beauties feature frequently on The Car, a piece that is as knowingly lonely as it is experimental. Big Ideas crashes through with notes that lament those same, titular plans and the excitement of new forms. Whether those new forms connect and infect Arctic Monkeys fans is beyond Turner, who criticises the “business of show” on Hello You with such an intensity that it becomes personal. Arctic Monkeys have never truly lost the colloquial edge found on their first record, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. They are still intensely aware of their surroundings and use them as a tool for lyrical and instrumental inspiration, but their area of influence has changed and they have grown. So too has their music. Artistic acceleration is found on The Car, an album that is a head above the rest but arguably not as good as all those classic singles fans still want Turner and company to chase down. If they did that, they’d have grown as little as Courteeners have.