Comes on vinyl LP – includes digital download.
Arctic Monkeys – The Car: A Slow-Burn Noir Masterpiece From a Band Unafraid to Get Weird
Vinyl LP pressing. 2022 release. The Car is the seventh studio album from Arctic Monkeys. Featuring ten new songs written by Alex Turner, produced by James Ford, and recorded at Butley Priory, Suffolk, La Frette, Paris, and RAK Studios, London
With The Car, Arctic Monkeys continue their long, elegant drift away from the pub-rock explosiveness that made them famous and deeper into a world of velvet lounges, mirrored ceilings, and existential hangovers. If Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino felt like Alex Turner disappearing into a cloud of velvet smoke, The Car is him stepping back out—still suave, still cryptic, but with a sharper silhouette. The band has traded Martian lounge-pop for something more earthbound, but no less cinematic: a grand, orchestrated noir-pop record that practically floats.
There’s a tenderness in Turner’s voice now, the kind that comes from self-awareness rather than swagger. Songs like “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” ache with Old Hollywood melancholy—lush strings, soft-shoe drums, and a vocal performance that feels like Turner is whispering from the backstage wings of a fading theater. It’s a breakup song, but also a curtain call.
On the title track, the band slips into a woozy groove, cruising through a kaleidoscopic emotional landscape where humor and heartbreak mingle in that quintessential Arctic Monkeys way. Their wit has matured; the punchlines don’t swing as hard, but they linger longer. Meanwhile, “Sculptures of Anything Goes” dives into darker territory, a synth-heavy, slow-motion crawl that echoes the brooding experimentation of TBHC—a reminder that this band’s left turns are never accidents.
Across the album, the arrangements are surprisingly opulent. Strings swell like vintage John Barry scores, guitars slink more than they shout, and Matt Helders’ drumming holds everything together with a kind of minimalist precision. These aren’t stadium anthems—they’re widescreen scenes from a movie set inside Turner’s mind: moody, romantic, and wryly self-deprecating.
The Car isn’t designed to blow the doors off. It’s designed to haunt you, stylishly.
