Arctic Monkeys, Alex Turner’s outerwear, and the art of evolution
New Arctic Monkeys is on the way.
The band announced their seventh studio album, titled The Car, will be released in October, and fans should expect yet another reinvention of the band who have managed to make their sound new with each of their albums. They’re a band who have managed the difficult tasks of maintaining their popularity, becoming a successful act globally, and keeping their music fresh enough to hold (most of) the fans they’ve picked up along the way.
They’re one of my favorite bands and have been hugely influential on my taste in music. I’ve talked enough people’s ears off about them, so it’s time to just throw my opinions into the ether. I’m taking the announcement of their seventh album as an opportunity to do just that, and chart the band’s musical and stylistic evolution.
So, in celebration of new Arctic Monkeys, here is my charting of the band’s discography and style based on its correlation with front man Alex Turner’s outerwear. The fashion will extend to bandmates Jamie Cook, Nick O’Malley, and Matt Helders, particularly in the 2010s onward, but is certainly most closely associated with the front man and primary songwriter of the group. He’s become a bit of a fashion icon, and his look appears to have become consciously connected to his music and performance.
But was it always that way?
Hoodie Alex Turner- Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
We all remember what it was like being a self-conscious teenager, finding a personal style while your brain is constantly churning through insecurities about what people think about that.
Now imagine while you’re going through that, you and your bandmates’ lives are forever changed the moment one of you looks into a camera and says the words:
“We’re Arctic Monkeys, this I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor. Don’t believe the hype.”
A YouTube sensation, the band were placed perfectly in time to emerge in a way that wasn’t really done before and is mostly artificial since. It was raw and accessible, new yet familiar in the way that The Strokes were.
Their explosive debut album was packed with late-night youth anthems, angsty rock and roll, and thick Yorkshire dialect and delivery. Everything about the presentation seemed like a brand new group of punks who didn’t give a shit.
And yet, they came off a bit shy.
But what else did you expect? They were kids.
And so this is Hoodie Alex Turner era. While there are photos of Alex Turner wearing a hoodie and potentially were from different eras. Which makes sense, he wasn’t turning into a fashion icon yet, nor was he embracing that role in anyway. It’s a persona befitting of the hoodie, and of the album. It’s a safe and comfortable outerwear choice of an uncorrupted burgeoning star.
Parka Alex Turner- Favourite Worst Nightmare
Alex Turner once said that public speaking was one of his worst nightmares, so perhaps this sophomore triumph was more than just a demonstration of the band’s staying power musically. It was the confirmation that they were here to stay, and they began to embrace that.
They came back from their debut success with a refined sound and a diverse tracklist. From the thundering introduction of Brianstorm, to the hit single Fluorescent Adolescent, to the fan favorite climactic conclusion of 505, Favourite Worst Nightmare is a maturation music making and showmanship. The Sheffield group had produced the fastest selling British debut in history, and matched it with a second straight album debuting at no. 1 in the UK charts (a streak that has yet to end).
And yet their celebrity had yet to really show itself in their image. They were certainly putting more thought into their dress than they had previously, and Turner especially was transforming his wardrobe to match the attention of the public eye he was receiving.
Parka Alex Turner is only slightly more defined than Hoodie Alex Turner, but this stage of his fashion and music evolution is vital to the body of work that followed. For one, it showed that fashion was beginning to become an important part of his and the band’s presentation and how it was a part of their music and performance.
This is a period where their embrace of what they see themselves as bleeds into their music, and that is an important part of what makes them an iconic group outside of the music itself.
Jean Jacket Alex Turner- Humbug
Here we see the long-haired, serious songwriter, Jean Jacket Alex Turner, and an album recorded in the California desert that drips with mystery and experimentation.
Humbug is a bit divisive for both fans and critics, introducing a different and darker vibe to the band’s discography. The introduction of organ was wholly unexpected in particular, and the dark turn of Turner’s lyricism. Nick Cave’s music and influence was starting to have a moment in pop culture, and Arctic Monkeys’ cover of Red Right Hand, the B-side to Crying Lightning, as well as the overall tone of the album seems to fit that vibe.
The bursty drums of My Propeller and Dance Little Liar, the creepy sound and presence of Crying Lightning and Pretty Visitors, and the weird romance of Dangerous Animals, Secret Door, and Cornerstone set the tone for their big divergence from the kind of music we’d come to expect from them.
And that eventually has set the tone for their discography since.
The drastic change makes sense considering the turn that Turner’s career specifically had taken since Favourite Worst Nightmare. His successful side-project with Miles Kane, The Last Shadow Puppets, gave him an opportunity to create some very cinematic music, and he got to make some music for cinema with six original songs for Richard Ayoade’s debut film Submarine. All of this happened in around the same period as Humbug, with the Submarine soundtrack happening shortly after, and was a really interesting part of Turner’s evolution as a songwriter. Probably more so than as a pop culture figure.
Which is why the jean jacket fits so well. It’s a bit of a soft-spoken phase, especially compared to what was to come, but one which gave us some of his best music.
But what was next? What did hanging out with Josh Homme in California ultimately mean for them? Would Los Angeles rub off on them?
Leather Jacket Alex Turner- Suck It and See
This is period actually probably a blend of Jean Jacket Alex Turner and Leather Jacket Alex Turner, as the next is a bit of Leather Jacket Alex Turner as well, but don’t let Matt Helders’ sleeveless jean biker vest impact your image too much.
Suck It And See Arctic Monkeys is the band starting to embrace the characters they were creating while also clearly changing as their life was more and more in the spotlight. Turner spoke of the idea of playing a showman on stage, and while it may have been a way of coping with stage fright it is clearly also a part of his method now.
This album was real Leather Jacket Alex Turner hours, and gave us the first leather jacket and 1950s rocker hairstyle combo.
The romance of the lyrics and hard imagery of motorcycle boots came to perfect marriage in an album that is too often underrated in the band’s discography. It’s got a smooth sound, and was recorded mostly with live takes of the four piece playing together rather than pieced together in production.
In chronological context it fits perfectly stylistically and musically as the transition between Humbug and AM.
Black Treacle, Reckless Serenade and the title track are the best examples of this, with the melodic ensemble work melting perfectly together and giving each member their task on the assembly line. It’s far from their most complex music, but is still some of their sweetest sounding, and some of the best cooperation between instrument and lyricism.
On stage as well as in style, this period also saw Turner lean a bit more into the showmanship side of things. His speaking voice on camera and on stage became more pronounced, he was a bit more arrogant and put himself out there as a rock and roll star. He wasn’t a Liam Gallagher, more a relaxed, still a bit shy David Bowie, and he was clearly onto something for their sound as well as style.
The release of R U Mine? on Record Store Day in 2012 was confirmation of this. It was, at the time, unattached to anything they were working on publicly, but privately it was a part of a project that was in the works. A natural step after Leather Jacket Alex Turner in the evolution of Arctic Monkeys.
Suit Alex Turner- AM
The ascent to rock stardom was complete with Arctic Monkeys’ fifth album. The driving guitar riffs of R U Mine? and Arabella, the sexy longing of Do I Wanna Know? and I Wanna Be Yours, and the experience scene setting of Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? and №1 Party Anthem showcase the most successful pop music songwriting of Turner and company to date.
Alex Turner, likely already in AM character, described the album as such:
“It sounds like a Dr Dre beat, but we’ve given it an Ike Turner bowl-cut and sent it galloping across the desert on a Stratocaster.”
Talk about looking for a style.
And then they went and matched it in style.
The slick black and white look, the Black Sabbath font homage (Also see Arabella guitar riff), the iconic soundwave cover, and the inside sleeve photograph show all you need to know about the direction the band’s look was going.
Their very intentional fashion choices around the release of AM and subsequent tours and the personality they took on in the spotlight. It’s the lasting image of the album certainly, and potentially the band given the success and circulation of AM.
The fashion was similar to Interpol’s suit and tie look in the early 2000’s New York scene, a look that set them apart from others like The Strokes and TV on the Radio as much as their sound did. For the Arctic Monkeys it served a similar purpose, but had more of an intention to stand out and turn heads. As they made it big in America especially it gave them a distinct aesthetic that made them different from the other rock and roll acts of the time.
In fact, they embraced that part of it as well. In his speech accepting the BRIT Award for Best British Band, Alex Turner basically said that their success was Rock and Roll crawling out of a swamp to ascend the mountaintop of popular music. An arrogance fitting of both their album and character, their moment of saying “yeah, we are better,” before going their separate ways for a few years, and as it would turn out, giving both their sound and persona a pretty big reset.
Smoking Jacket Alex Turner- Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino
Finally we arrive at Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, a four stars out of five return by the boys from High Green nearly five years after the release of AM. It came after the first real extended break in their career, as they’d been touring or producing albums together nearly uninterrupted for the better part of a decade since their breakout.
With the break and the new album came Smoking Jacket Alex Turner, an evolution thanks in part to The Last Shadow Puppets’ second album, Everything You’ve Come To Expect. In writing music for a new project, Turner hid away in a house in Paris, France, writing music on a piano rather than with a guitar. He was tired of writing love songs and rock riffs, and instead wrote something that was more analytical of his craft. Fame and entertainment are heavy themes, and in that way the semi-concept body of work is a pretty stark contrast from the intent and accomplishment of AM.
He was supposedly a bit nervous when the rest of the band came round to see what he’d been working on, but were all on board with the new sound once they’d heard it. They released no singles in promotion ahead of the album, and upon it’s release they’d certainly delivered on the strong change in sound evident from the brief but intriguing sole promotion video.
It sounds like an album written by a self-reflecting rock star a few year removed from his last work and living in Paris looking for inspiration. And he looked the part too with the grown out hair and beard, at least until he shaved it all off.
But we’ll always have the outerwear.
So what Alex Turner outerwear (if any) will define The Car?
Well here’s the first photo from the album’s promotion.
No outerwear as of yet.
And their new song, I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am, has a pretty groovy vibe to it. Whether the rest of the album matches that wholly is unclear, but it sounds like a song that would come after Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
Who knows what is next from them. By now we’ve been taught that everything you’ve come to expect is not entirely what should be expected(see what I did there), but either way I can’t wait.
