On “The Car”, Arctic Monkeys Present Drive-in Cinema
A review of the lovely seventh record by Arctic Monkeys, who returned to Earth with a stringed orchestra
One thing is certain: no cars were driven on Arctic Monkeys’ seventh album The Car, the follow-up to 2018’s divisive Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Much like the vehicle on the album cover, (likely) a Toyota Corolla that drummer Matt Helders took with a Leica M6, it is parked someplace where it cannot drive out of, alone and deserted by its owner. For the animated cover available on Apple Music, a camera zooms slowly in and out, telling the listener this isn’t just a car, but the car. What it’s doing there? If the lyrics are to be believed, it either needs to have a mirrorball to mitigate the inevitable goodbye, or it’s there to retrieve something from the trunk to make the holiday feel like a real one. As is usual with frontman and lyricist Alex Turner, the lyrics come at you from weird angles. But if anyone was hoping that the psyched out lounge act of Tranquility Base… was a one-off fluke, “as usual” with the Sheffield band that never stays in one sound for too long, will find themselves sorely disappointed. The band has spoken of a “return to Earth”, and this sense of return is palpable. As soon as the strings begin There’d Better Be A Mirrorball, it becomes clear that the return also included an entire orchestra. The only movement to be made here is a gentle sway that could quite shockingly translate to a slow-moving waltz. This is no place to headbang, and if it ever came on the radio, it would be less for a nightly escapade like 2013’s AM and more of a comfortable ride home — during the golden hour at the latest. This car is not the shiny Chevrolet1 of R U Mine where Helders, Turner, and bassist Nick O’Malley lipsync with masked girls. The car of The Car is a serviceable one with a serviceable trunk, and all driving is strictly for utilitarian purposes. If it drives, anyway. It doesn’t.
The Car is less about a vehicle but more about places: sets where orchestras have you surrounded, a gallery with blank canvases and sculptures of indeterminate shape and size, the backstage of a theater, the aftermath of a photoshoot, a seat behind camera as a debutante movie director. Movement is not something that the protagonist does, at least not without assistance. Being somewhere with people around is confusing, and the jet skis on the moat are less invitation to move and more an incentive to philosophize. The two things that move for certain is the lover that moves on from the protagonist, shot in slow-motion (not without tears, he observes on the blockbuster Body Paint) and time. The inevitability of everything that has happened and will happen weighs quite heavy on Turner’s pen this time around, and as he takes a dive into somebody else’s (!) crystal ball, he stops and turns back: why not rewind to Rawborough Snooker Club? / I could pass for seventeen if I just get a shave and catch some Zs, he sings in a breathtaking falsetto on album highlight Hello You. The lyrics are unbound to any current location, the melody and stylistic leanings free from any current time, a perfect canvas because on the majority of the record, Turner grabs every chance to think and remember. Though Turner asks on the cryptic Jet Skis on the Moat, “Is there somethin’ on your mind / Or are you just happy to sit there and watch while the paint job dries?” the album has long made up its mind on what the lyrics mean. These are no longer the haphazard Tweet-sized bites of Tranquility Base. Though big ideas are lost in time and context, no train of thought is lost in The Car. Turner’s pen is sharp, astute, and wordy as usual, but on the seventh album he is less the novelist and more the photographer. In its first half, the abum presents itself as shots of odd angles in a movie presented out of context, performed by a band that has a string orchestra at its command. Though the details are not clear, the story presents itself eventually, one that starts with heartbreak and ends in nostalgia, a literal bowing out: a revelation or your money back / that’s what it takes to say goodnight, Turner sings with no hurt in his voice, but something akin to contentment. It’s easier than it sounds to wrap your head around it all, and surprisingly fun to come to the same conclusion that Turner dubs as “perfect sense”.
Ahead of the album’s release, Alex Turner spoke to The Big Issue about his interest in film and especially its editing process; this has not only translated in him directing the music videos to lead singles There’d Better Be A Mirrorball and Body Paint, but also in the scope of the album itself. Musically, a line can be drawn from A Certain Romance to 2011’s soundtrack contribution Submarine, including The Last Puppet Show outings all the way to now, seen as a cumulation if not a necessary conclusion. But where before, Turner spoke for, through, or as the main character, The Car goes meta: Alex Turner stars as a seasoned star of a rock band, at turns bemused and thoughtful about the glitz and glamour around him, and for the most part mildly surprised that his rock band with the silly name is still kicking, and so popular, for over sixteen years now. Elaborate thoughts include a Lego Napoleon movie and playing soundtracks on mandolin. Where it differs from the last record is that this time around, the other members are also part of the cast, directing, and soundtrack. A palpable energy courses through the band and bounces off against the steadfast strings to dynamic, and electrifying effect, best realized on Hello You. A novel is easy to write on your own, but a big-budget film (even a soundtrack to an imagined film, like The Car reveals itself to be in its stunning second half) will need more than one person: if a trip to the moon is what it took to puncture the bubble of relatability and mature the sound of Arctic Monkeys like wine, blending 70s rock sounds with baroque pop and the grandiosity of film soundtracks as a result, that’s for the best anyway.
The comparisons to the last record are inevitable to make with these genre descriptors. Tranquility Base was a house of mirrors filled with Turner’s paranoia and skittishness about the outside world. It managed to disguise itself as a spaceship, which disguised itself as a galactic place of rest, but the jig is up when the first line is the regret that he “just wanted” to be one of The Strokes. Regretting fame is so 2018, though, and The Car is decidedly less anxious and more at peace with the way things are. Contrary to some interpretations that float around on interviews, It’s not like with moving closer Perfect Sense Turner signals that he’s done being a rock star, far from it; it is more of an acceptance that he’s approaching forty, that there may be no new fans anymore, and that this is the way things work. So what if he was okay with goodbyes anyway? This is the guy who started his career by telling everyone to not believe the hype, and on The Car, he is now man of a band singing Spanish on Italian TV. On Body Paint, he jams out with his bandmates at the end, bringing the listener back to the world of a sold out theater, whilst sounding like it’s from a time where drive-ins were popular; he’s fingerpicking on the vulnerable climax Mr Schwartz, and playing wah-wahs on Jet Skis on the Moat. It isn’t as loud as the loudest points of AM, because the singles of the 2013 album operated in the stark of the night and reeked of beer and desperation. The Car still is showy, though: louder than Tranquility Base, more awake than the washed-out Humbug, yet far calmer than the hyperactive one-two punch of Whatever People Say I Am… and Favorite Worst Nightmare. Where Helders would jam out on earlier records, now strings do. The songs on The Car are open, lovely, and free from ghosts — with the sole exception of Sculptures of Anything Goes, the matured version of One For The Road b-side You're So Dark, appearing in stark contrast to the brightly lit world of the album. Still, all the songs work both in an intimate context (the fantastically sentimental Big Ideas, Jetskis on the Moat) but also in places where it echoes nicely (the stunning title track and Mirrorball), and often — best heard on Mr Schwartz — do both in the same song with ease.
The Car is enchanting, confident, and assured in its murky, uncertain, and contemplative world and situation. It lives in a world where the fake is real and the real is unrecognizably distorted — but the album manages to bring reasonable doubt, heartwarming sincerity, and a humorous wink into all of it. Alex Turner has never sounded better or more in control of his voice: the whip-smart, introverted young boy that was sing-talking on his debut is now an emotionally open, observant man diving into full falsettos and delivering his lines with gusto and a lot of swagger. If one were to take the infamous 2014 Mercury Prize moment — that rock’n’roll, eh? It just won’t go away — then the current Alex Turner embodies more of that spirit than the Alex Turner of the past. The showmanship and rock star exaggeration has been internalized, refined, and comes across as genuinely charismatic rather than an act. Where before, the big emotional moment was a one-off in the record — A Certain Romance, 505, The Jeweller’s Hands, I Wanna Be Yours, The Ultracheese — now they fill the entirety of The Car, guiding the listener from the very first moment to the last. The album won’t move the head, but it does move the emotions, bringing the listener to a place of reminiscence where the sun caresses the face. Though the first half may struggle to find its footing amidst its scattershot snapshots, the second half is a coherent image of sentiment, the band coming together in a way that deserves to push The Car to the pantheon of Arctic Monkeys’ stellar discography. And in doing so, the album taps into grace. This is not the kind of music that invites to speeding up on the highway. And it’s no Chevrolet, the car, just a parked Toyota Corolla. But who would put the pedal to the metal at a drive-in theater, anyway? Oh, nevermind, it’s just a daydream of the old days. Easy to confuse the two.
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