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It’s been about a year since The Arctic Monkeys released The Car – and it’s been about a year since it began repeating like a scratched record in my mind. After the deconstruction of the idea of The (old) Arctic Monkeys that began with Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, in this album they have perfected what that experiment began.
Being drunk out of your mind and patiently waiting to be refused entry to a nightclub was part of the teenage experience in my world. After being bounced you would swap T-Shirts with a friend and try again, and be refused entry, again. The soundtrack to this escapade was the teenage angst-driven Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not, The Arctic Monkeys’ breakthrough album. Their rock-driven sound and lyrically youthful songs made me feel that my teenage escapades were, in fact, the actions of a band of would-be rockstars.
But, the best bands know they aren’t young forever, and the Arctic Monkeys have the guts to admit this. As I got older, I found that the albums which intervened up to Tranquility Base all tried to recapture the youthfulness of their early work, which was commercially successful, but a creative fading light. And then, Tranquility Base came along, and the Arctic Monkeys let the world know that they had matured, and were capable of more.
A master of its craft shows you the stitching. Anyone can follow a recipe, but a chef understands what is going on behind the recipe. In The Car, The Arctic Monkeys play with sound. After years of perfecting the craft of making music that captures a moment, they are now so masterful that they build an entire, ethereal, teasing espionage-themed world.
It would be all too Red Hot Chili Peppers of them to try and match the energy and subject matter of their earlier albums, but The Car is what grown-ups listen to: nuanced, complex, it engages your brain. Above anything else it is classy as hell and about as smooth as James Bond in a bathtub full of baby oil. The result: I find once again the Arctic Monkeys have aligned their music with the man I am today and give me the same feeling they did 15 years ago – the feeling of being interested in music.
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