It seems that the clue was in the title of the Arctic Monkeys first album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, all along. Over the years since its release in 2006 the titular reference – borrowed from Alan Sillitoe’s book Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – has appeared to be of increasing significance when posed against the band’s output. Put bluntly, this has been a group who’ve remained unconcerned about living up or down to your expectations.
That’s not to say of course that they haven’t made some genuinely thrilling music, and with Favourite Worst Nightmare and particularly AM also willingly donned the cape of indie rock’s saviours with some panache. But that train came to a juddering halt with 2018’s wickedly provocative Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino.
The original plan was to ride the shock wave of its apparently Faustian pact with seventies MOR, sci-fi kitsch and yacht rock, but COVID meant that instead Alex Turner and co. were left to decide whether their opinion splitting salvo would form a career chapter or a totally new book. What they’ve done next all but confirms that it was the latter.
Working again with producer James Ford and recording at a former monastery in Suffolk, the emphasis – if that’s what it could be called – was more on vibe and feel than traditional song writing dogma. Turner tried the process with guitars, even metaphorically putting some biker boots on in search of a riff, but what came out first instead was the line ’Don’t get emotional’ which begins There Better Be a Mirrorball, a song which he knew immediately would be the gateway to his less orthodox new world.
In some ways it marks a stylistic continuation, a dalliance that nods to crossing swords once more with Scott Walker and Burt Bacharach. But this time the orchestration is real and with the presence of that and other nuances commitment to this direction now seems double underlined in red.
One critic has posited that this signals the quartet reaching their post-song era, but The Car is more like a Rubik’s cube; addictive and slightly infuriating, until it isn’t. Musically its a stroll through recherché soul, funk and introverted chamber pop, a score to which you can throw in the airy bossa of Mr. Schwarz, Sculptures of Anything Goes weird synth pads and the beige strings and melancholy of the superb closer Perfect Sense.
New additions to an already bulging canon may take a little time to fully work out, but for the moment Body Paint’s sitcom soundtrack weaves post dinner party magic, whilst the title track blazes out a rare guitar solo and Hello You conjures up images of Prince if he’d moonlighted as a glasswasher in some Yorkshire WMC. Notably Turner’s lyrics are at their bankable peak: there are far too many urbanely smart couplets to choose just one from, but if pushed ‘Village coffee mornings with not long since retired spies/Now that’s my idea of a good time’ surely edges up there.
Unpacking it all, The Car is clearly meant to be a fair few things some might feel it shouldn’t be, like an immersive listening experience in an era when attention spans are measured in moments, or a potential antidote to playlist culture and the disposability it renders art down into. Post it quietly somewhere online, but it might even be another impish you’ll be reet of passage amongst the many leaps of faith the Arctic Monkeys have required their devotees to make since the beginning, Myspace and riot vans.
Why is it? What is it? What does it all mean? The clues might be everywhere, but The Car thankfully remains shrouded in fascinating mystery.
The Voice Of Unreason 
1 Comment
Comments are closed.