BACK IN THE DRIVING SEAT
ARCTIC MONKEYS FRONTMAN ALEX TURNER TALKS TO ALEX GREEN ABOUT THEIR NEW ALBUM, THE CAR, AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR OLD MATERIAL
IN the two decades since they formed in Sheffield, Arctic Monkeys have evolved.
They’ve gone from indie upstarts to stylish retro-rockers with a penchant for vintage pianos and high concepts.
It’s been a gradual process but one that has seen the clattering guitars of barnstorming hits such as I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor and 505 firmly dropped in favour of lush strings, smooth jazz and soul.
The Car, the band’s seventh album, completes their latest transformation, refining the template set by its predecessor, 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino – a concept album about a luxury resort on the moon.
The band’s charming, sometimes inscrutable, frontman Alex Turner says their last release helped lay the groundwork.
“I would imagine at some point there was an intention to not go anywhere near science fictionsounding things with this record – in the lyrics or the music,” he says.
“We may have successfully evaded science fiction in the music side,” he adds with a laugh. “But there are actually a few instances where a bit of that language hangs over from the last one, probably more than I even realised.
“There’s plenty about it that feels different to me from the last one. There’s a progression in the dynamics of the whole thing. Perhaps it executes those ideas more effectively.”
Alex speaks slowly and thoughtfully and his turn of phrase is pleasingly similar to his cryptic, often abstract song lyrics.
I ask if The Car is a spiritual successor to Tranquility Base – the creative process began in the same room in Los Angeles before his move back to London.
“I wouldn’t put up that much of a fight against that,” he says before a pause. “I can’t emphatically subscribe to that idea but I can’t totally oppose it either.”
Work on the album began in summer 2021, when the band came together at Butley Priory, a 14th century monastery turned wedding venue in a remote part of Suffolk.
“That was the first time we had been back together all at once, for what felt like a really long time,” he explains.
On The Car, Alex sings of jet skis, photoshoots and mirrorballs, a dusty and creaking vision of fame – and a more grown-up version of the adolescent angst of early Arctic Monkeys records.
One album it bears resemblance to, he suggests, is Nat King Cole’s Where Did Everyone Go?, a collection of ballads from 1963.
“There are important parts of this record that are instrumental and often in the writing process they preceded a lot of the lyrics certainly, or any of the vocal ideas,” he offers.
“It sometimes feels like those bits have aspirations outside of a pop song – and the record is me dragging them back towards a pop song.” He adds with a dry laugh: “That’s what I would put in my review anyway.”
Just a few months ago the band played a pair of confident, relaxed headline sets at Reading and Leeds festivals, prompting rave reviews.
The crowd was largely made up of teenagers too young to have experienced the band during its early years. Some tracks from then still feature in their sets, such as the mosh pit-prompting ...Dance Floor.
“It really depends,” offers Alex, when asked how his relationship to those songs has changed.
“I suppose that (Dance Floor) has never really been benched. It’s always been in there so it’s evolved incrementally over the last 15 years or whatever. The version of Dance
Floor now, it almost feels like that one is a separate thing because it’s just always in there. Some of the other ones we rested for a while.
“This summer we were playing Ritz To The Rubble and it felt like that doesn’t come as naturally as it once did. There have been moments where it has felt like you are doing a cover, but I don’t think it feels like that any more. We have gone through that phase possibly. It’s something else now.
“I’ve been really enjoying doing that song and nothing’s really off the table at this point as far as what’s going to go in a set,” he adds.
He jokes that, at 36, he is getting a little out of breath during the heavier, more energetic tracks.
“Sometimes some of them just take a minute to figure out how to play it again now at this point. And that’s fine. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of wrangling.”
Alex is now regarded by many as one of most significant frontmen of the 21st century, and his album-toalbum transformations have led to comparisons with
David Bowie. But he says it’s rare that he ever looks back at the Arctic Monkeys’ catalogue as one cohesive whole. “When you listen to the records back to back – it’s not something that I do quarterly, but I have given some attention to that twice maybe in the last 15 years – it all seems like it’s the same band to me. But you may disagree with that.” Another mammoth tour and a likely number one, how does Alex motivate himself at the top, and where do Arctic Monkeys go from here? “I suppose it depends on how you are looking at it,” he reflects. “To think about it like that is almost as if the big show is some sort of trophy, which it doesn’t feel like it is – or ought to be.
“To suggest there wouldn’t be anywhere to go after playing Glastonbury for the first time suggests it’s this trophy that you’re going to put up. I don’t think it feels like that from where I’m standing.” The Car, right, by Arctic Monkeys is out now
(Dance Floor) has never really been benched. It’s evolved over the last 15 years