After years of morphing from relatable rockers to stylish schmoozers, Arctic Monkeys return with both feet firmly planted in the lounge. A grand production, no doubt, despite the tongue-and-cheek pastiche of their previous album absent. This time it's serious, but does The Car stick the landing? A selection of The Mic's most opinionated Artic Monkeys fans come together to decide.
The Car essentially feels like an extended audition for the next Bond theme from UK alternative titans, Arctic Monkeys. The album is at it's best when it is at it's grandest - broad, glittering, glossy, smooth, cinematic: tracks like the lead single, There’d Better Be a Mirrorball and The Car. Turner singing in a bit of a more low key way on these tracks helps, but many of the tracks on the album, especially the ones more sparse on instrumental depth, have this sort of strange breathy quality and a singing register that sounds a little strained. With The Car, bigger is better, and as the grandiosity of the music swells with the album’s progression, so too does its quality. Although the album has a tendency to split a bit at the seams, and is a less cohesive release than some of their previous, (abandoning such high-concept themes as Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino), Turner and the band keep control of this sprawling new sound impressively well, even if, at some points, the album feels needlessly decadent. - Hal Hewlett
Arctic Monkeys return with an era-defining and genre-reviving Rock album, full of slick riffs, tight drumming and a bombastic band feel. Rejoice! Just kidding, we instead have The Car, a calculated experiment in genius, laden with cinematic mastery and a charismatic frontman at his best. Just kidding, again. We do have The Car, that is the album title, (not that it seems to allude to any overarching theme or concept), but in the place of a charismatic frontman at his best, we have Alex Turner. This man has made such a significant contribution, not only to British music, but to Rock & Roll that everything in my body wants to praise his performance here, I feel it in my bones, but I can't. I understand Artic Monkeys has never been the 'Alex Turner Show', but we're about as close as we could possibly get.
"This man has made such a significant contribution, not only to British music, but to Rock & Roll that everything in my body wants to praise his performance here, I feel it in my bones, but I can't."
Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino was a decent but misunderstood album at best, with a few great tunes laden with quirky pastiche and a slightly comedic schtick. This self awareness is lacking from the band's new offering, with the opening track, (admittedly rather enjoyable and the only high point on the album for me), coming off as a grand and very serious, (very serious), song to mark some sort of world-changing event, like a new world order or change to Alex Turner's hair. The Arctic Monkeys are artists damnit! And you will treat them as such! It all feels a bit forced. The big-budget sonics are there, and whilst the album does nothing offensive, (I'm ignoring the truly awful and acidic riffs on track two), it simply doesn't achieve anything of note, but I'm sure Alex Turner had fun strutting around Persian rugs with amber sunglasses balancing on the tip of his nose whilst crooning poorly into a vintage microphone and recording an album with his boys. - Ewan Samms
The famed Sheffield crew have returned with another offering in their potent catalogue of music
that is becoming increasingly hard to define to just one genre, and this latest release adds even
more arrows to the quiver of the band. With an album that follows in the footsteps of the
previous album, Tranquility Base Hotel And Casino, albeit with a less obvious concept and more
of a general theme, the band are once again making moves into new musical territory. The
album has the scope and feel of a film soundtrack, and works in that sort of space if you
consider it as such, however as an album it feels like it falls a bit flat. Individual songs show off
the brilliance of the group, such as the two singles There Better Be A Mirrorball and Body Paint,
as well as one or two album cuts, but the album doesn’t flow as well as previous ones and
definitely feels less well put together. From what I can tell, there is a vague theme of a performer
who feels that their time is coming to an end, which may well be the case as Alex Turner might
well feel it’s time to give up the Arctic Monkeys, but we don’t know whether this is the case yet,
and so until we do I can only assume this is me reading too far into the album. Ultimately, I think
it’s an album of limited success, that showcases musical talent over songwriting skill, and feels
like too much of an ego trip to really shine on its own. - Jake Longhurst
Hal Hewlett + Ewan Samms + Jake Longhurst
Edited by: Ewan Samms
Cover image and in-article image courtesy of Arctic Monkeys via instagram. In article video courtesy of Arctic Monkeys via YouTube
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