To entertain, in some way, is to surprise, to question, to tease, and even to ruffle. The Car, Arctic Monkeys’ seventh LP, does all of that—unraveling half-baked secrets, yearnings, and goodbyes through a sound that is, once again, revised if not entirely reinvented. A decade after AM cemented their status as rock’s modern torchbearers, the Monkeys remain unpredictable, refusing to be boxed in by expectations. Frontman Alex Turner now seems to own two pairs of shoes: the rock god with slick hair and sultry riffs, humbled by heartbreak, and the reflective lounge writer, bending genres while lazily pondering the fate of the universe. The Car—somewhere between orchestral art rock, baroque pop, and vintage funk—settles in the sweet spot between these two worlds, effortlessly cool yet ever-evasive.
Evasive of what, exactly? The rock-god status that AM imposed on them? The weight of being the last great British band? Perhaps even their own past selves. Go further back, and one begins to reminisce the days when Turner wrote like an imaginative and infatuated schoolboy on Submarine (“I etched a face of a stopwatch/On the back of a raindrop/And did a swap for the sand in an hourglass”), or even their explosive debut in 2006, with Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. That title, in hindsight, almost feels like a mission statement—fans have been trying to pin them down ever since. In early 2014, after the meteoric rise of AM, the UK band hit the stratosphere (outer space, too, would be charted a few years later) of both fame and critical acclaim. Their savory guitar hooks and unforgettable choruses sent fans into euphoric convulsions; even the casual listener couldn’t help but take notice. Turner became the face of rock and roll, a genre that he said would ‘never die’, in a BRIT Award speech for Album of the Year. But that version of the Monkeys—the anthemic, leather-clad stadium band—was never built to last.
A stark change occurred in 2018, when after being gifted a piano for his 30th birthday, Turner embraced the keys in Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. He did take “the batteries out his mysticism/and put them in his thinking cap” (a lyric from Suck it and See). Love took a bit of a backseat and modern society was masterfully reflected upon in a genre-bending, space lounge, funk-rock-collection of tunes. A sound so different that it was initially almost jarring, even for their loyalists. Just a few weeks in, its brilliance dawned—the vivid story of a post-apocalyptic luxury hotel marketing itself on the moon, grew on us.
In The Car, it’s as though the Monkeys have returned to Earth from their escapades in outer space, jaded by a divided fan base, but still enjoying the aftertaste of their lunar holiday. The compelling but dystopian ‘tech-has-ruined-us’ critique is replaced by more recognisable conversations in Turner’s head, about deceptive lovers (“For a master of deception and subterfuge), nostalgia (“Why not rewind to Rawborough Snooker Club?/I could pass for seventeen if I/Just get a shave and catch some Zs”) and complicated farewells (Still dragging out a long goodbye/I ought to apologise).
For all its orchestral flourishes and noirish elegance, The Car isn’t an album that begs for attention—it lingers, unspooling itself in quiet corners rather than stadium-wide singalongs. Where AM hit like a shot of adrenaline, this album feels like a slow exhale, cinematic and smirking in equal measure. Songs like “Sculptures of Anything Goes” stand out—not because they demand to, but because they seep in over time, their cryptic storytelling taking root long after the first listen. If Tranquility Base was a sharp left turn, The Car is the band settling into the winding road, confident in its own strangeness.
As much as this collection is about romance, trust, and the usual stuff, it’s also a cheeky, bitty dialogue Turner has with his audiences. He is unapologetic and self-aware of his artistic departure (“Puncturing your bubble of relatability/ With your horrible new sound”), yet wistful and still searching(“I’ve been given good reason to believe/I ain’t quite where I think I am”). The album really does sound like the getaway vehicle with tinted windows on the album art (an E90 Toyota Corolla, apparently): full of half-revealed ruminations and translucent lyrics that shun away all investigators. And this isn’t just Turner’s playground. Matt Helders’ drumming, once the backbone of their raucous energy, now punctuates in jazzier, more deliberate ways. Jamie Cook’s guitars, once razor-sharp, weave in and out like background characters in a noir film, while Nick O’Malley’s bass lulls rather than lunges. It’s a band playing with restraint, trusting that impact doesn’t always come from volume. The Car may not be the Arctic Monkeys’ most immediate album, but that’s precisely the point—it’s an album that isn’t here to chase approval but to build its own world, one lush track at a time.
The enigma is intentional. Turner remarks that the album was “quite a long time, a real edit in process,” signifying a shift from their songs coming alive in the band’s explosive expression on stage, to fine-tuning things back in the studio. Rhythmically, with Matt Helders’ tight drumming, the band often merges piano, guitar and voice in eight-bar intro riffs, that later make way for a whole string section to take hold of the fills, verses and climaxes. “Everything,” Turner says to Apple Music, “has its chance to come in and out of focus.” The piano is still around, but the guitars seem slightly more familiar, less from outer space and more from an eccentric Englishman’s living room. One could argue that due to their sonic tone and complexity, they’re still closer in instrumentation to Tranquillity Base, but vocally, Turner’s delicate falsetto now sounds more like it’s a part of his daily arsenal than reserved for fantastical settings. The result is one that carries influences of David Bowie’s later tunes, Gloria Ann Taylor (How Can You Say it, in particular) and Steely Dan, among more. Hints of the old romance do remain, (“Lights out on the Wonderpark/Your saw-toothed lover boy was quick off the mark”) and there’s surely a James Bond theme hidden somewhere in the LP. With the singer’s newfound affinity for cinema and “the business they call show”, it’s safe to say that the ‘old’ sound has been bid Adieu, as the group moves out of Los Angeles and to the French Riviera. Let’s embrace it: we wouldn’t be so intrigued by the boys from Sheffield if every album was just a different spin on AM, notwithstanding its brilliance.
While Turner’s music may be complex and ever-evolving, his persona has remained pretty “strip-down-acoustic” in contrast to the theatricality of today’s musical icons—no face tattoos, no neon hair, no bulging biceps, no ‘iced-out’ accessories, no performative reinvention. And yet, he captivates audiences like few of his generation. Whatever it is he does musically, it’s elusive, but I’m reminded of something Vincent Van Gogh once wrote: “I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.”
It takes a rare kind of courage to do what the Monkeys are doing—to resist the temptation of becoming a well-oiled nostalgia machine, recycling the sound that made them stadium-sized. Most artists, once they find their winning formula, cling to it like a life raft. Shawn Mendes has his heartbroken-chocolate-boy charm, The 1975 thrive on self-referential irony, while bands like Oasis and AC/DC cemented their legacies through unwavering sonic consistency. The Arctic Monkeys, however, seem to follow a different script—one closer to David Bowie’s restless reinvention or Bob Dylan’s electrified defiance at Newport. Like Radiohead’s post-OK Computer pivot or The Beatles’ leap from Rubber Soul to Revolver, their evolution feels both inevitable and reckless, endearing in its willingness to alienate. In Kierkegaard’s words “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” and perhaps that’s what makes their journey so compelling—the choice to embrace the unknown, knowing full well it might undo them.
For all we know, the Monkeys’ next influence could be Dutch post-impressionism (humour me), but that’s the point, isn’t it? To keep searching, to stay open, to let creativity dictate the course rather than past laurels or industry expectations. Mathew Strauss of Pitchfork, says the frontman is now in the ‘midst’ of transforming the Arctic Monkeys, perhaps implying that the transformation must, one day, be complete—that there is some clear end to be achieved. But with Turner, we seem to be learning an important lesson—that discovery is a constant, that being in one place is unnatural. Art, one could say, is just an ongoing adventure, a topsy-turvy rollercoaster that the Arctic Monkeys have learnt to ride in style.
Yuvraj Nathani is Founding Editor at ALMA Magazine. For more, follow him here.
