Late theorist and writer Mark Fisher didn’t especially like Arctic Monkeys. He considered the Sheffield band an example of how so much “new” art in the 21st century is rooted in nostalgia. “Arctic Monkeys airbrush cultural time out and appeal to this endless return and timelessness of rock,” he said to Crack magazine in 2014. It’s undeniable that part of the band’s success across two decades – from Myspace-propelled teens, to bona fide rock stars, to cosmic piano crooners in space – has relied on this innate sense of timelessness. But it’s hard not to wonder what Fisher would have thought listening to The Car, the group’s refined, lounge-y, cinematic, orchestral seventh album. Nodding to Bowie, the Beatles and bossa nova, it seems in its own way to be contemplating time.
In an interview with NME, frontman Alex Turner said of The Car: “So much of this new music is scratching at the past and how much of it I should hang on to.” It makes sense: Arctic Monkeys’ best music has always been about yearning in all its forms; here, this is manifest in Turner’s unmistakable, swooning vocals, brimming with intimacy and lyrical longing, and instrumentals that make moods of love, lust, grief, insecurity and dislocation flutter somewhere deep within. The Car delves into depths and subtleties of feeling with gilded music that belongs to a past which never existed: velveteen strings, gleaming keys and licks of guitar that veer from funky to blazing and anticipatory.
These days, Turner has become known as an esoteric lyricist, and there’s certainly some of that here. But for the most part – unlike on the band’s previous LP, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino – he’s stepped out from behind the conceptual veil. In his half-expressed thoughts, there’s poetic directness and abashed hesitancy, and little bravado to be found. The hefty orchestral arrangements (done by Turner and, tellingly, music supervisor Bridget Samuels, known for her work in film) and occasional disco sheen allow his delicate falsetto to cut through.
The gentle waltz of Body Paint finds Turner contemplating the traces of what gets left behind, saying goodbyes to lovers (while acknowledging with a quiet pang: “If you’re thinking of me, I’m probably thinking of you”). Elsewhere the farewells are laden with wistfulness and hope (“I’d throw the rose tint back on the exploded view, darling, if I were you”). He drolly considers the critiques levelled at the band since their change in direction (“Puncturing your bubble of relatability with your horrible new sound”) while also admitting to his insecurities, lamenting “the ballad of what could have been”. Turner repeatedly confronts the reality of himself here, acknowledging the “costume” he wears and the irony of previous iterations: “And if we guess who I’m pretending to be, do we win a prize?”
The beauty of The Car is in how it balances drama and nuance, the intricate melodies (mellifluous guitar on the title track, flourishing strings and keys at the end of Big Ideas) and the sweeping, thudding drums (Sculptures of Anything Goes). Turner’s voice is sometimes soaring, strutting, but just as often cowering a little. It’s an album that asks what we take with us when the dance is over, when the curtains close, when a great love comes to an end: which dreams do we hold on to, and which do we let go?
Arctic Monkeys aren’t making music of the future, or even of the present: but it is their present – one of uncertain journeys and unclear ideas of which version of their pasts to carry with them. Doubt and possibility sit hand in hand as heart and candour pierce Turner’s self-effacing riddles. Nevertheless, taken as a whole it’s a sumptuous feat: their elegiac brand of atemporality and sheer heart-on-sleeve pining is distinctively their own.
