Arctic Monkeys, “The Car.”

If you’re one of those Arctic Monkeys fans who headbanged in the early aughts to “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” you might be disappointed in the band’s latest album. With their seventh studio longplayer, The Car, the Brit rockers leave behind the straightforward rock from their early years to indulge in the esoteric soundscapes they first explored in 2018’s space-age-themed Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. 

Sonically, it’s a denouement from when they last brought the rock back during 2013’s uber-successful album A.M. It’s funny that the band named this album after such a solid, weighty object, since its sound is so nebulous. 

The slowed-down, vibed-out tracks bleed into one song—an overriding moodiness with subtle, shifting tones layered to make an album. It embodies a sound they’d likely want you to sit and listen to from start to finish—shag rug and clunky old headphones optional.

Where Tranquility Base was like being in the lounge of a spaceship fashioned in the style of a giant disco ball in a movie directed by Roman Coppola, The Car is like a circumspect Italian ‘70s new wave film. These last two concept albums are the sound of a band less interested in no. 1 party anthems and more interested in being hooked on a feeling.

All the songs were written by singer and frontman Alex Turner, who still favors cheeky lyrics. Opener “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball,” which is also a single, slides into earshot languorously, setting the stage for the ‘70s lounge rock vibe that permeates the album. You can picture Turner with his slicked-back hair in a smoky bar next to a piano, plaintively making last requests to a lover before they part: “So do you wanna walk me to the car?/ I’m sure to have a heavy heart/ So can we please be absolutely sure/ That there’s a mirrorball for me?”

The Car is produced by James Ford, the drummer for Turner’s side project The Last Shadow Puppets, so the album also has a similar Scott-Walker-esque vibe.

That vintage vibe segues smoothly into the full-on ‘70s funk of “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am.” The track is full of plonky bass and Turner tongue twisters, with its “disco strobes in the stumbling blocks.” It’s clear by now that the band is more interested in creating a mood and a vibe rather than quick hit singles.

By the third track, “Sculptures of Anything Goes,” the sound gets thick with menacing synth and echoing drumming. But the retro vibe feels more like mimicry than muse. As the strings creep in, you can imagine Turner performing musical monologues in a one-man lounge act on a cruise ship.

Midway through the album, “Body Paint” lets Turner’s voice soar and retreat in lovely lyrical leaps. It’s the kind of torch song any self-respecting diva would take on as a personal challenge at karaoke night. But “The Car” feels tedious, almost like it’s mocking itself, with its noodling guitar interludes and abrupt stop. By the time you’ve almost finished the album with the murky melodrama of “Mr. Schwartz,” you might be asking yourself, “what’s this movie about, again?” It might seem more abstruse and intellectual, but that doesn’t make it sound original or intriguing. 

The selfish take would be that the band has gone up its own arse and lost the plot, refusing to indulge in the rock music that made it such snarky fun on the dance floor, while the generous take would be that Arctic Monkeys are exploring and growing as all creative artists should. But The Car doesn’t sound like they’re charting new territory. It sounds like a band being clever and intellectual in ways we’ve heard before, from itself and from other bands before it.

In terms of the narrative landscape, from Tranquility Base, they’ve crash-landed back on earth with The Car, but you’d be forgiven if you still thought they had their head in the clouds. The new album is so named, according to the band, because “a car, like a band, is a conveyance that can take four people somewhere they never expected to go.” For listeners, however, it might feel less freewheeling and more like a road we’ve been down before.