Album Review: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Jealousy in technicolor: Arctic Monkeys (photo: Andrew Cotterill for mojo4music.com)

Arctic Monkeys

Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (Domino)

Ever since ‘I Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor’ struck a major international chord in 2005, the heights of Arctic Monkeys’ popularity have never dipped below dizzying, but it was with the release of 2013’s AM that they broke into another dimension altogether. AM was deemed a classic almost immediately in the press and in the public eye; an iconic and stylish culmination of the band’s musical talents, as well as a crystallisation of the buccaneering spirit mythologised by rock stars down the years. Cut to spring 2018, and the swift and merciless backlash that greeted that album’s follow-up was the stuff aspiring songwriters’ nightmares are made of. Within minutes of its release, thousands took to social media to deride Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino as – in one instance – “dogshit”, touting feelings of crushing disappointment and even betrayal by a band they thought they knew. In truth, however, Arctic Monkeys are experts at playing the long game, and as keen fans willing to scratch beneath the surface will attest, they have accrued mainstream success throughout their career without making concessions to anyone but themselves. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is certainly far from what AM obsessives were expecting, and indeed hoping for, but to cite for the thousandth time a wry High Green kid’s opening gambit from 2006, “anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment”. Alex Turner would go on to reveal his feelings even more bluntly in an interview prior to the release of 2007’s Favourite Worst Nightmare: “as far as audience expectation goes, I couldn’t give two fucks”.

Although far from the prickliest of provocateurs in the business, this spirit of pursuing their own interests has always been central to the ethos of Arctic Monkeys as a unit. Whether Turner and co. were collaring Joshua Homme to produce 2009’s Humbug, writing soundtracks for Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, pitching in with Iggy Pop’s comeback or hanging out in P. Diddy’s kitchen, they have clearly been enthused all the way, beholden to their own whims rather than adhering to archetypes of what one of “Britain’s Biggest Bands” (ugh) should supposedly be. As such, they are one of the most consistent acts currently operating, which holds true for their creative energy and quality of output alike. “We’ll stick to the guns,” Turner thundered on 2007’s Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? “Don’t care if it’s marketing suicide, we won’t crack or compromise, your derisory divides will never unhinge us.”

And so the story goes with their sixth album: the work of a band following its own tried-and-trusted intuition. Pre-release singles? None. Traditional verse-chorus structures? Thrown to the wind. Artistic integrity? Firmly intact, and then some. These songs largely stem from demos Turner began composing in private on a Steinway piano gifted to him for his 30^th birthday, and the results are bound together by a spectral, haunted quality that’s most evident in the handful of original vocal takes that feature on the final product. Coaxed by Jamie Cook and producer James Ford into a full-band release, the comparative spaciousness of the album’s sound is pulled into greater focus by its emblematic cornerstone: a taqueria-topped hotel on the lunar surface, in an area fast gentrifying in the wake of some irksome apocalypse or another back on Earth. It is via this concept that Turner felt able to address modern plights (the poison of social media, disconnection, failing compassion) and to reshape his songwriting style, opting for a “lounge-singer shimmer” somewhere between Father John Misty’s tart weariness and the dreaminess of Dion circa Born to Be With You. The results are delivered with enough empathy and sly humour alike to ensure that Tranquility Base never becomes a self-pitying view from the top.

When compared to the stomping immediacy of AM et al, it’s no wonder that Tranquility Base was so readily dismissed by so many. But for those willing to bear with Turner and friends, it’s clear that Tranquility Base is not without precedent in their catalogue. Musically, these songs share a kinship with ‘Don’t Forget Whose Legs You’re On’, a spectral (and sumptuous) B-side from the Humbug years, whose sparse, eerie ambience is echoed here in the likes of ‘Science Fiction’’s brooding theatricality and terse drum patterns. Combined with Turner’s flirtations with baroque and glam in his Last Shadow Puppets work, and his bandmates’ willingness to set aside individual egos in favour of a unified sound for each album, the seeds of Tranquility Base are not all that difficult to spot. But more so than anything they’ve released thus far, this is an album that takes time revealing its strengths, to be tuned into over weeks and months rather than intended to capture a fleeting moment or season. The kneejerk reactions it prompted were interesting to witness, but were also pretty pointless considering the album’s design. Tranquility Base is a different beast altogether, and while it will prove its own longevity in due course, it could tentatively be held up as one of the best choices Arctic Monkeys have ever made.

Always at the centre of Arctic Monkeys’ music, Turner inevitably takes the spotlight even more so than previously. There’s something insistently endearing about the pleasure he so evidently takes in playing with language, and Tranquility Base is liberally dashed with grace notes. On ‘Star Treatment’, the singer recalls “rocket ship grease down the cracks in my knuckles”, and halcyon days when “love came in a bottle with a twist-off cap”. Later on, he croaks about “the hottest tears you ever cried, multiplied by five”, and on ‘Science Fiction’, pokes a few holes in the fourth wall by musing on his own songwriting capabilities. His delivery is even more plummy and pronounced than it was on Suck It and See: you can hear him trying to feel the shape and contours of the words as they spill from his mouth. It’s arguably more than a little self-indulgent, but even when his lyrics fall on the obtuse side, there remains a captivating joy for wordplay that brings the bulk of it in to land. There may be one “Moon’s side boob” too many, but Turner is a curiously compelling narrator throughout these sojourns through space, surrealism and memory.

The same enthusiasm extends, as ever, to the songs themselves. Influences can be heard ringing from every nook and cranny, while the band smartly never loses sight of its identity: Matt Helders’ inventive, assured sticksmanship, Cook’s short, sticky guitar motifs, Nick O’Malley’s fluid basslines, more often than not cut to a Serge Gainsbourg-esque clip. Their infatuations du jours are tightly woven into the fabric of this music: the compressed oomph of Lonerism-era Tame Impala, the multi-harmonised airiness of Pet Sounds, the taut grooves of David Axelrod. This puppyish pick-n-mix is matched beat-for-beat by the references Turner stirs into his writing, including concepts lifted from David Foster Wallace, Neil Postman, George Saunders, and a cabinet full of sci-fi flicks. All grist for the Monkeys’ ever-ticking mill, and it suits them best when taken in its entirety.

As such, the decision not to release any singles prior to the album drop makes a lot of sense, but complaints regarding a lack of decent tunes are wide of the mark: hooks abound on Tranquility Base, but unlike those on AM – which squared right up to the listener with abrasive confidence – here they beckon us in further on repeated listens. The denouement of ‘Star Treatment’ is hitched to a gorgeous descending melody, and the moment of weightlessness following that first drum fill is a sublime welcome to Turner’s narcoleptic wonderland gone to seed. ‘One Point Perspective’ is better still, a tastefully low-key guitar solo swooping into the starry-eyed fug to great effect, as Turner pores over dreams (and to stick with the ongoing metaphor, planets) left behind as the whirlwind of life carried him forward to “quiet rooms like this”.

Although the pace lags occasionally, there are sparkling details hidden at every turn, well-buried in the mix so that the album reveals its winning moments on the fifth, tenth, twentieth listen. Stick with ‘Golden Trunks’ for its Beatlesy harmonies, and give Turner’s more outré observations in ‘Batphone’ the benefit of the doubt. It’s worth it for gems such as ‘The Ultracheese’, the triumphant, heartsore conclusion that swishes the curtain with a tired yet elegant grace. “I might look as if I’m deep in thought,” Turner croons, acknowledging years of posturing in press photos and music videos, before revealing the glimmer that was in his eye all along: “but the truth is I’m probably not, if I ever was.” It’s a lovely work of self-reflexive songwriting, one of Turner’s finest, and it closes the album exquisitely. Things are more straightforward elsewhere, such as in the gleefully demonic cacophonies of ‘She Looks Like Fun’ and the steadily surging melodrama exhibited in ‘American Sports’. And then there’s ‘Four Out Of Five’, quite simply one of the finest tunes the four have ever laid to wax. Poised, detailed, and tongue-in-cheek, it has the highest hopes for salvaging the band’s reputation among the disaffected many who eagerly dived into Tranquility Base on release day and felt their faces scrunch in angry bewilderment.

Of course, such a thing doesn’t matter a jot, and nor should it. Twelve years since they launched their firework of a debut, the numerous metamorphoses of the Arctic Monkeys have never been less than compelling to witness, and though these tweaks and turns have found varying degrees of success, the baseline quality has always been admirably high, especially when weighed up against their peers in indie stardom. Rather than settle for less and risk artistic stagnation for the sake of commercial security, with Tranquility Base Arctic Monkeys confirm – if it was ever in doubt – that they remain forward-thinking and incredibly generous to themselves and to their listeners. It’s the latest in a long line of reasons to put your money on them: they are in this game for all the right reasons, and on this evidence, for the long haul. Exactly how one of “Britain’s Biggest Bands” should be operating, and these days, that’s unheard of.

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