The Car
is in every way a sequel to
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
, the 2018 album that found
Alex Turner
pushing
Arctic Monkeys
in the direction his side project
Last Shadow Puppets
pursued. Louche and lugubrious,
is rife with signifiers of a stylish, seedy past: wah-wah guitars, swelling cinematic strings, tinkling ivories, and analog synths. What's missing is any sense of rock & roll, a swagger that's absent in the backbeat rhythms, slithery guitars, and falsetto croon
Turner
adopts for the majority of the album. Ever the wordsmith, he packs a lot of lyrics into his winding melodies yet ends up obscuring their intent by singing like a lounge singer whiling away his hours in a second-rate hotel. The effect is intentional and is not without appeal. There's a certain charm in hearing
abandon all their previous strengths, defiantly avoiding melody and muscle; few groups of their stature embark on such a radical revision of their aesthetic.
doesn't feel like a progression from
so much as a holding pattern, though, with any forward motion arriving in arrangements, not compositions or execution, particularly because
seems to be angling for atmosphere, not hooks, with his melodies. The free-floating croon helps
amiably drift in space, but it also highlights how the record could use a couple of elements to bring it back to earth. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine