Arctic Monkeys have released their long awaited and highly anticipated seventh studio album, The Car. The album continues in the foreseeable development of Alex Turner’s vision and takes a step further from its predecessor, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
Like its predecessor, The Car is slick and embraces its own modernity through a grandiose production, but this time, filled with a vast orchestral backdrop. It brings a suave sense of luxury that has you feeling like you’re driving down the LA freeway in a ‘57 Eldorado. It’s swanky, but remains old-fashioned in aesthetic.
On the first track, “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball,” the air is warm but crisp, like a summer morning before the sun has risen. His lyrics are cold and distant as a compensation for the feeling of loss that’s being expressed. It hurts, but he won’t let it. With this solid foundation of conflicting emotion, Turner brings in the listener to see what’s beneath it.
However, there isn’t much beneath it, if there is something at all. For me, the album quickly becomes an abyss, or a never ending Russian doll that fails to achieve anything it’s set out to do. We’ve left the Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and have gotten in The Car with no destination in sight.
For all its high-end production efforts and wordy lyrics, the production ends up void of impact and the lyrics wind up being nonsensically vague and paradoxical. By relying on himself more than ever, lyrically and vocally, he’s created a greater risk of falling flat in self-indulgence. Turner wants you to unpack his lyrics while forgetting that there has to be something, at least an idea to unpack. Here’s an example from the song, “Sculptures of Anything Goes”:
Blank canvasses
Lent against gallery walls
Flowing towards sculptures of anything goes
On the marble stairs
Leading to almost wherever you want them to
With lyrics like this, the only question to ask is, are they intentionally circular or is Alex Turner truly chasing his own tail? To me, it seems like maybe he’s heading for an aesthetic of wealth that results in an abundance of, and ultimately, inconsequential choices. If that is it, then great. But, the kicker of this is the irony in making an album with such a lavish production, and then marinating in the self-seriousness of that through aesthetically-driven lyrics with no subtext.
Should you listen to it? For sure! After all, these are just one person’s thoughts. It’s still an Arctic Monkeys album and I think Turner has earned the right to his artistic autonomy. Hell, Bob Dylan put out a Christian rock album and Snoop Dogg put out a reggae album, so why can’t we let Alex Turner indulge a bit?
