Album review: The Car, by Arctic Monkeys, doesn't quite get into gear
Arctic Monkeys new album is The Car. Picture: Zackery Michael
★★★☆☆
Arctic Monkeys were a highlight of Electric Picnic 2022 — quite an achievement considering they were playing the dead rubber Sunday night Main Stage slot in the teeth of a howling downpour.
Wisely, the band focused on the hits and were sparing in what they previewed from their seventh album, The Car. But that record has now arrived and confirms that songwriter Alex Turner continues to flee the landfill indie scene that spawned the Monkeys in the mid-2000s, and has leaned once more into his new incarnation of Millennial Roy Orbison.
This is a smooth, silky LP that picks up the baton from 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino — a fan-dividing affair where Turner asked us to imagine David Bowie and Burt Bacharach collaborating on a lovingly coiffured suite of lounge-pop ballads.
The Car takes that formula and smooths out whatever ruffles remain. It is in places, quite lovely, helped by Turner’s voice, which has matured into a chocolatey croon.
What’s lacking are the mosh-pit adjacent moments for which older devotees of the group may have held out hope. Strings and syrupy production are to the fore on opener There’s Better Be A Mirrorball while the title track kicks off with piano and folk guitar, positioning a disappointed-sounding Turner at the centre of a roiling torch song.
In his thirties, Turner has settled upon a sound in which he feels comfortable as an indie star of a certain age. It’s hard to quibble with the results: the project is immaculately assembled and hewn impressively in the image of Turner’s world-weary persona.
And yet, it’s difficult, too, to get past the 'sameyness': of the sound as one-mid tempo number chugs into another. The Car is slick and shiny — but what a shame it doesn’t go off-road more often.
