Da Car (bri-ish) Review

In this article, Peter hates on the Arctic Monkeys and their BAD album The Car.

The Car (in Bri-ish Accent) Review

By: Peter Easterwood

The band Arctic Monkeys (actual human beings), was formed in 2002 in Sheffield, England with three members: Alex Turner, the lead vocalist and guitarist; Matt Helders, the drummer; and Andy Nicholson on the bass. Later, they added backing vocalist and guitarist Jamie Cook, forming the group's primary four members until the replacement of their bassist Nicholson in May 2006 with Nick O’Malley. The band performed their demos at local bars before they signed their first record deal with Domino Records in 2005.

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On Jan. 23, 2006, the Arctic Monkeys released their debut studio album, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. The album received rave reviews for a debut. Pitchfork (a music news and review site) gave the album a 7.4 and said, “Their LP was only released two days ago but these Sheffield teens are already considered the UK’s biggest new band since Oasis.” Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not showcased the band's fun, tight-knit instrumentals and songwriting while keeping listeners engaged with constant fast-paced songs throughout the album. With this single album, the Arctic Monkeys stepped into the Garage Rock landscape as a band to pay close attention to. While Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was a good album, their second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare, is the opposite.

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Favourite Worst Nightmare would be released on Apr. 23, 2007. While it has good songs, like the very basic “505” or the also basic “Fluorescent Adolescent”, these songs are evened out with skippable songs sprinkled throughout the album. It is not heinous, but it is a far cry from their first album; it lost the fun, exciting vibes that oozed through and through on Whatever People Say. It still received rave reviews on AOTY (a review site that collects “professional reviewers” ratings and regular people’s ratings), receiving a 79 on Critic Scores and an 82 on User Scores. The Arctic Monkeys would continue to release Garage Rock albums, from Humbug in 2009 to AM in 2013. You could say that the Arctic Monkeys found their niche but, on May 11, 2018, they released Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, which showcased a new side of the band.

The album dwelled on a jazzier atmosphere, with less in-your-face drumming, and used a more methodical piano as the base for the songs. Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino’s change in sound seemed sporadic and random; this would be due to the lead singer Alex Turner’s writer’s block he was dealing with at the time of writing. For the band and Alex Turner, it is a reflection on their lives; Turner, in an interview with Ryan Dombal (writer for Pitchfork), said for the first song and first line of “Star Treatment”, “When I wrote that line, I imagined I would return to it, and it wouldn’t end up on the record. But when I circled back around to it I felt like it was right where it ought to be because of how it makes me think, 'S***. The last 12 years just flashed by.' There’s an honesty and a truth to it.”

Every song has aged like perfection due to the past few years of isolation and confusion many suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Turner’s writing process copied the isolation since each song was written by himself with his piano, letting his thoughts write the music and his hands play the piano. On “American Sports” (lyrics found on Genius, a website filled with full song lyrics for almost every song), Turner sings, “Emergency battery pack, just in time. For my weekly chat with God on video call.“ While a 72 in Critic Score and User Score on AOTY seems lukewarm, the latest trending user reviews say the opposite. Many give it an 87, 92, 80, etc. Describing the album with words like “Amazing”, “This is the S**”, and “Did anyone see this coming?” The Arctic Monkeys finally found a new sound they could call their new “home”. With this, the band would work on their next album The Car, for four years.

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There would not be that many teasers/singles released prior to The Car’s release but, on Aug. 29, 2022, “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” was released. It was not a groundbreaking song. It continued the methodical jazz-rock sound Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino utilized, but that is where the issues are. "There'd Better Be a Mirrorball" itself is fine. There are no complaints about its production or sound. It is just downright uninteresting. Nearly two months later, on Oct. 22, 2022, The Car would finally be released, and it could not have been more boring. The opening track is “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” and having that as your opener is not the best of signs. The opener should always be the reason listeners are reeled into the album, but with a boring song like “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball”, most of the listeners probably fell asleep.

It might sound like the album is downright atrocious, but it is nowhere near atrocious; the album just lacks variety. Each song dwells on the same slow pace, so they all mesh into one another, becoming less of an album and more of a 37-minute-long single. The Car does not utilize the piano as much. It also contains less thought-provoking lyricism from Turner. Adding onto his lyricism, possibly the worst part of the album is Alex Turner’s wretched singing. While Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino utilized Turner's wide variety of voices to sing (modal to falsetto), The Car contains a very bored-sounding Turner. Maybe his voice has aged over the four years they were making the album, but it sounds more like he is uninterested in singing and uninterested in the album. The song “Body Paint” deals with sex. That is all. Turner showcases his very in-depth lyricism on “Body Paint” singing (from Genius), “It won't be long. Straight from the cover shoot. Still a trace of body paint. On your legs and on your arms and on your face. And I'm keeping on my costume. And calling it a writing tool.”

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Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino showed the Arctic Monkeys' new side, going from a garage rock band that stuck close to their guns into a jazz-rock fusion band. The album could not have aged any better and perfectly defined the world we live in now, but The Car is the Arctic Monkeys' downfall. Losing the indepth lyricism and the smoothness of the piano and replacing both with zoned-out instrumentals, Turner does not show the same amount of interest he showed on Tranquility Base. It is saddening to see such an exciting release fall flat on its face and show no growth from the band. Instead, they have regressed. Altogether, The Car gets a 4.7/10. It is nowhere near a bad album, just boring and forgettable (10/10 as an audio to fall asleep to though).

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