The Car

About

After recording <i>The Car</i>, there wa, for “quite a long time, a real edit in proce,” Arctic Monkeys leader Alex Turner tells Apple Music. Indeed, his UK rock outfit’s daring seventh LP sounds nothing if not <i>composed</i>—a set of subtle and stupendously well-mannered mid-century pop that feels light years away from the youthful turbulence of their historic 2006 debut, <i>Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not</i>. If, back then, they were writing songs with the intention of uncorking them onstage, they’re now fully in the business of craft—editing, shaping, teasing out the sort of sumptuous detail that reveals itself over repeated listen. “It’s obviously 10 song, but, even more than we have done before, it just feels like it’s a whole,” he say. “It’s its own.” The aim was to pay more attention to dynamic, to economy and space. “Everything,” Turner say, “has its chance to come in and out of focu,” whether it’s a brushed snare or a feline guitar line, a feathered vocal melody or devastating turn of phrase. Where an earlier Monkeys song may have detonated outward, a blast of guitars and drums and syllable, these are quiet, controlled, middle-aged explosions: “It doesn't feel as if there's too many times on this record where everything's all going on at once.” On album opener “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball,” Turner vaults from a bed of enigmatic, opening-credit-like keys and strings (all arranged with longtime collaborator James Ford and composer Bridget Samuels) into scenes of a prolonged farewell. So much of its pain—its romance, its dramatic tension—is in what’s not said. “The feel of that minute-or-so introduction was what feels like the foundation of the whole thing,” he say. “And it really was about finding what could hang out with that or what could be built around the feel of that. The moment when I found a way to bridge it into something that is a pop song by the end was exciting, because I felt like we had somewhere to go.” For year, Turner has maintained a steady diet of side work, experimenting with orchestral, Morricone-like epics in The Last Shadow Puppets as well as lamplit bedroom folk on 2011’s <i>Submarine</i> EP, written for the film of the same name. But listen closely to <i>The Car</i> (and 2018’s <i>Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino</i> before it) and you’ll hear the walls between the band and his interests outside it begin to dissolve—the string arrangements throughout (but especially on “The Car”), the gently fingerpicked guitars (“Mr Schwartz”), the use of negative space (the slightly Reznor-y “Sculptures of Anything Goes”). .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →