From the gleaming tailfins of 50s rock’n’roll through Bruce Springsteen and beyond, cars are one of the most well-travelled tropes in rock. Mostly, they equate with the freedom of the open road, with status and flash, with outrunning the law. Or they provide a place to have it off.
Arctic Monkeys’ elegant seventh album, The Car, deals in none of that. From the cover art – an aerial view of a lone car in a vacant lot, shot by drummer Matt Helders – to brief mentions in frontman Alex Turner’s lyrics, this is an album about a getaway vehicle shorn of glamour. The cover photo implies surveillance, a spy theme that ties in with other mentions of covert activity on The Car – there’s someone sweeping an apartment “for bugs” in the title track (although that could just be a reference to unsanitary holiday accommodation – it’s hard to tell). Sculptures of Anything Goes reflects, among other things, on Turner’s move from Los Angeles back to the UK. “Village coffee mornings with not-long-since-retired spies /Now that’s my idea of a good time,” he winks.
