Released: 2022
It’s not the first time the (very) late American comedian Bill Hicks has been mentioned here, but no apologies are made for that. Speaking about the 1990 trial in which the parents of two young men who committed suicide after listening to Judas Priest attempted to sue the band, Hicks acerbically pointed out that no performer is in the business of wanting their audience dead.
Well, maybe not dead, but dead to them. The Arctic Monkeys were not the first band to attempt a full scale breakout from their past, but few artists have attempted to try it from such a position of popular ubiquity. And yet firstly on 2018’s exercise in the loungey, sci-fi kitcsh Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino Review and then via it’s follow up The Car, they managed to successfully confound a nation used to grown up indie rock dynamics. The lions, the tigers, the bears, oh my.
There’d Better Be A Mirrorball was the latter’s opening number and in of itself, a wonderful piece of breakup melancholy. Turner had made it both the album’s anchoring point and range finder, but the dolorous strings and piano – and lack of a chorus to speak of – made it an obtuse, vivid shade of seventies beige come to life. Like it’s parent record, there was a slowness to the reveal that brought the patient a sense of reward, a payoff which told anyone listening that this elegant postcard from the band’s new world hoped very much to find you well.
The Voice Of Unreason 