The Car

Description

The English band returns with an adventurous, heavily orchestrated album filled with enigmatic songs of love, longing, and doubt.

To make a point, or at least the sort of point thatAlex Turnermight try to make, its good to get a little lost. The 36-year-old singer is in the midst of transformingArctic Monkeys, one of the biggest rock bands of the new millennium, into a lovesick, debonair lounge act. At their recent live shows, throngs of fans go mad at the hint of a familiar drum beat or guitar riff, scenes that might lead you to suspect England had won the Euros, not that a wry group of Northerners had taken the stage in flared pants to sing about space hotels, espionage, and, sure, looking good on the dancefloor. After the heights of 2013sAM, a swaggering album that rejuvenated Arctic Monkeys career, Turner turned inward and upward on 2018sTranquility Base Hotel & Casino, exposing his fears and desires obliquely, through the concept of an elaborate resort in the cosmos, watched over by Big Brother and populated by desperate ghouls dancing to the sultry notes of piano and synthesizers. Its the most intimate Turner had ever been, opening up with the safety of fiction and metaphor.

Pitchfork