For anyone fooled into thinking this is 2022, Arctic Monkeys deliver a musical message that the 1970s are still going strong, on their new record The Car (Domino Records) the follow up to 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino
While a suave Alex Turner centre-stage, delivers thirty-plus minutes of crooning, backed by elegant orchestration — all as smooth as a slice of The Carpenters with a sprinkle of Al Green on top — his bandmates hang back, providing tasteful, low-key support.
If you’re looking for a rocking good time, that’s not what Turner and Co are about here.
Seconds into the single and opening track ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ — with its easy, euro-vibed intro, jaunty stop/start drum rhythm and piano melody — a question springs to mind. It’s a question that floats around near the surface for most of the album: is this a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of high-budget seventies AOR, or are the band playing it straight?
This question never really gets answered. What is clear though (also in the band’s videos to the opening track and it’s companion single ‘Body Paint’) is that aesthetically The Car is fully committed to locking the listener (or viewer) into a world of soft-focus camera, reel-to-reel tape, tasteful string arrangements, a lot of falsetto and a smattering of porn guitars.
There’s definitely a wry sense of Turner documenting a slightly peeling-wallpaper version of high-society aspirations, but the pastiche (if that’s what it is) is so dead on. This isn’t Carry On goofiness, it’s all too convincing. Is this a good thing? It’s kind of hard to say.
On the one hand, it’s pretty delightful in this modern age of auto-tuned, pop-blandness to hear a song-writer (all these songs are credited to Turner), writing actual songs, with all sorts of interesting chord progressions — like the title with its shuffling Scott Walker dreamyness.
Equally, if you want to focus on the arrangements, it’s all seamlessly integrated, with tracks like ‘Jet Skis On The Moat’ featuring some very enjoyable interplay, all creating a pleasant, soothing ambience that Turner confidently croons on top of.
For anyone however seeking some more gritty rock stomp, it’s largely absent here. While ‘Hello You’ does have a bit more of a rock groove — allowing the bass, drums and guitar to feel a little more central — even here, as with the rest of the album it’s almost invariably Turner and the strings or keys that shape the music.
The funk-lite of ‘I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am’ is another track that kind of harks back at least to the band’s 2013 album AM — with a faint hint of Josh Homme’s (Queens of the Stone Age) slick residual influence on Turner — but still smothered with the smooth seventies pop/soul aesthetic of the record.
The noirish ‘Sculptures Of Anything Goes’ is easily the most modern sounding track on the album, with moody, low-key synth. It’s probably the highpoint of the whole album, but as with everything else here, it drifts along elegantly and then just casually stops.
It’s all very sophisticated and all very nice, but there’s a real absence of grit, of something that might add some tangible drama to the whole affair.
From time to time, this package of a rock band playing 1970s soul music could almost be a Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs / Twilight Singers) project. Dulli though would have this drizzled with a coating of high drama and torment. This is too knowing to be emotionally gripping.
Sophisticated, clever, confident, but not really compelling. There’s plenty to enjoy on this record, but not enough to love.
Buy the album here: https://store-us.arcticmonkeys.com/
7 / 10
TOM OSMAN