Arctic Monkeys - Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

The Quietus

Up until the point of its release, the most rewarding aspect to Arctic Monkeys' sixth album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino had been the hilarious unveiling of their visual aesthetic, a misfired attempt at dandyism that merely resulted in them resembling a bunch of recently-divorced Basingstoke solicitors who like to meet for occasional nights of poker, cheap cigars and grouching. It fed my fear that the band might finally be at best a busted flush, lost in the gak-the-lads posturing most depressingly revealed in that boorish Spin interview with Alex Turner and his pal, bin man of the indie landfill Miles Kane, two years ago.

It's now five years since the release of the QOTSA and hip hop inspired AM, a gap that few groups have the luxury of taking these days. That, and all indications noted above, suggested that Arctic Monkeys were about to take the first ship to Planet Hubris, a place that, unlike nearly all of their predecessors or peers in the curious realm of fairly blokey indie rock, they've commendably avoided. Now based in Los Angeles, that capital of vapidity and excess that has a habit of warping English imaginations in unpleasant ways, they exist in some bizarre world where you might easily acquire the delusion that you're a modern-day Elton John, even if on a slightly lower budget - much of this record was inspired by Alex Turner being given a Steinway Vertegrand piano (they retail for upwards of eight grand) for his 30th birthday in 2016: “I arrived back off holiday and it was sitting there,” he's said; "The addition of the piano to this room was definitely a huge part of the making of this album, because that suddenly became the centre of it.” Thankfully, instead of bloated and arrogant wranglings with fame and fortune, this is a concise and clever record.

From the first moment it's abundantly clear that this is a very different Arctic Monkeys album from any that have gone before. It's present via the self-awareness in Alex Turner's opening lines of 'Star Treatment' - "I just wanted to be one of The Strokes / Now look at the mess you made me make / Hitchhiking with a monogrammed suitcase". Suddenly the tailoring on those photos makes a hell of a lot of a sense, the perfect visual foil to this wonderfully ridiculous and smooth lounge-influenced corker, with its tinkling refrains and rattling drums and falsetto backing vocals. "I went a little too wild in the 70s," he sings. Alex Turner is 32.

It sets the tone for a strange and hugely enjoyable album, as meticulously crafted and at times as outré as the architectural model of the fantasy leisure resort of the title pictured on the cover. Apparently Turner made this himself, cutting and shaping cardboard and covering a room with the debris, a pleasingly eccentric new example of a musician trying to cope with fame and ego via highly-focussed activity. Perhaps in building the elaborate structure, and writing the songs to soundtrack it, Turner constructed a destination to where he could ship some of his less pleasant tendencies.

Wondering if this is in part a form of celebritherapy or atonement for past bellendery aside, the mood set on 'Star Treatment' continues on second track 'One Point Perspective', which opens, "Dancing in my underpants / I'm gonna run for government / I'm gonna form a covers band". It's at that point that Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino starts to make me think of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at their most performative, slitheringly masculine and daft, or a Grinderman who got off in a wipe-clean cocktail bar rather than a rock & roll dive. There's the same insouciance, craftiness, and leer. Lyrically too Turner's lyricism of batteries running low thanks to video calls with God, "Jesus in a day spa" and a "prophetic esplanade" is increasingly Cavean in feel. His wit is sharper than before, especially when it veers into #AccidentalPartridge territory: "Technological advances / Really bloody get me in the mood", he sings on the title track.

It's that song that nicely shows off James Ford's production as superb, dextrous and light. Piano, drums and a playful, more experimental sonic palette throughout make a fine bed for Turner's increasingly expressive vocals. He defies physics and common senses of perspective and lechery, warbling and hooting "kiss me underneath the moon's side booooOOOOOooooob", again on 'Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino'. Curiously, this song is just one of many moments on the album where it feels as if they've picked up the mantle, lyrical, vocal and musical, from their dearly-missed Domino labelmates Wild Beasts.

On 'Golden Trunks' (perhaps my favourite song title thus far in 2018), 'One Point Perspective' and 'Four Out Of Five' the pugnacious guitar of yore is still present, but gives flavour rather than dominates, like a good bit of fatty marbling in a premium steak. The latter track becomes a glorious, soaring pop ballad devoted to the gentrification of space and leaving user reviews of intergalactic upscale leisure emporia.

'She Looks Like Fun' and 'Batphone' hark back to territories previously covered by the band, puncturing the end of the record slightly, but the drunken end-night slow-jam of the aptly-named 'The Ultracheese' makes for a pleasing final flourish. This is by far and away the most charming, enjoyable and progressive album that the Arctic Monkeys have made and bodes well for a pretty interesting future, if only Turner could try and send the Last Shadow Puppets to the giant Punch & Judy Show in the sky. The Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino appears to be a place where it'd not be too bad to spend some time, even if I maintain that the dress code is preposterous.

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Pitchfork 81

Arctic Monkeys’ daring sixth album is a left-turn if ever there was one, but the way Alex Turner swaps witty sleaze for absurdist suave makes it a totally bemusing and fascinating listen.

Drowned In Sound 70

This is not the Arctic Monkeys of What Ever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not. It’s not even the Arctic Monkey’s of their last album, 2013’s AM. If it wasn’t for that familiar, languid Sheffield drawl and very occasional forays into tight, fuzzbox grooves, you’d struggle to recognise this as the same band. Tranquility Base has more in common with the retro ballads of Turner’s The Last Shadow Puppets, or his solo soundtrack to the movie Submarine. This is not an album influenced by the Von Bondies and The Vines. Instead its a peculiarly warped take on Serge Gainsbourg, hitched to the frazzled genius of Miles Davis, mid-period Beach Boys and the end-of-the-line, weirdo-Beatles of Abbey Road. Tellingly it takes inspiration from both of these bands at a point where they were stretched to breaking by fame and expectation.

The 11 songs of Tranquility Base are shot through with disconnected isolation and loneliness. The title track undermines its lush instrumentation and some beautiful bass playing with a chilly, odd atmosphere; all unsettling keyboards and Turner’s voice rasping at the top his register about “the moon’s side boob”. ‘Golden Trunks’ invokes the lost melancholy of Pet Sounds, while ‘The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Flip’ is the sound of ‘Do You Like Worms? (Plymouth Rock Roll Over)’ and ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ having a coldly beautiful existential crisis to “the exotic sound of data storage”, and ‘Batphone’ sees Turner “sucked through the hole in a handheld device”. ‘Science Fiction’ underlines its internalised dystopia by nicking the descending piano refrain from Abba’s ‘Money Money Money’; as brazen steals go it’s pretty successful, importing some of that songs unsettling cool.

Happily there is still fun to be had in this post-post-modern-retro-Monkey-world. ‘Four Out of Five’, the closest thing here to the classic Arctic Monkeys sound, is built around a palm-muted riff that could be Lennon and Harrison jamming to McCartney’s piano; minimalist instrumentation offset by some lovely harmonies. It gets more Beatlesy on ‘She Looks Like Fun’, its swooping refrain living up its title. Turner’s lyrics are as witty as ever and some of his best one-liners are here - “dance as if somebody’s watching, because they are” or “I just want to make a simple point about peace and love, but in a sexy way” though you sense a growing panic behind the grin. Including a line like “I’ve a feeling the whole thing may end up too clever for its own good” is a smart get-out clause, but being self-aware doesn’t really excuse Turner’s occasionally smug tendencies.

There’s plenty to enjoy and appreciate about Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino; the playing is dextrous and satisfying, the textures are gorgeous and the ambition on show is commendable; what other band of their generation would attempt the dark, jazzy changes of ‘American Sports’, or the minimalist funk of ‘Batphone’? Who else would rewrite Bowie’s ‘Five Years’ as a lounge ballad and give it a title like ‘The Ultracheese’? Admittedly, not all of those choices work and songs can meander in directions that are at best unlikeable and at worst plain irritating. Still, where some of their peers are so unforgivably one-dimensional, let’s not slate a band for having too many ideas, eh? Though it may not look good on the dance floor, this is a rich and complex record which rewards patience (and a good set of headphones). It’s not the Arctic Monkeys you might expect, and living inside Alex Turner’s identity crisis can be an occasionally uncomfortable experience, but give it some time and this sixth album reveals itself as one of the most interesting of the band’s career.

The Guardian 0

Sheffield’s finest swap earthy rock for lunar vibes. It could lose rather than win fans, but that may be the point…

There are hard acts to follow, and then there’s Arctic Monkeys’ last album. 2013’s AM was, in so many respects, the perfect rock record of our times. With a few exceptions, mainstream indie guitar music often seems an exhausted idiom, trying on fifth-hand poses to diminishing creative returns.

On AM – a record about lust in LA – the Monkeys’ carnivorous riffs and piledriving drums exchanged body fluids with the slink and anomie of contemporary R&B and west coast hip-hop. AM’s qualitative brilliance was matched by its quantitative uptake, earning the Sheffield outfit No 1 spots internationally, and a massive new audience in the US. Was it the band’s best since their 2006 debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not? In all likelihood.

Give yourself up to one of our very greatest songwriters, and then it’s a riveting and immersive listen