Four Out of Five — Arctic Monkeys
#365Songs: August 10
I respect any band that takes an established, highly popular rock band archetype and goes full lounge act. Fuck you, bombastic arena — give me velvet-lined booths, cocktail waitresses in too-short tuxedo tails, and watered-down cocktails.
So goes the tale of Arctic Monkeys’ leap of faith from the top of mount alt-rock with the release of their 2018 album Tranqulity Base Hotel + Casino.
The story behind the album feels made up, but the more you read about Alex Turner, the more authentic it feels. Turner sequestered himself in his LA abode, dubbing his spare room and studio space the Lunar Surface. This based on the notion that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing on a studio soundstage. When he assembled the rest of the Arctic Monkeys to share his work, I imagine the entry into his studio something like the discovery of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
Except with disco balls and an upright piano.
And then Turner detailed his concept for the band: a song suite documenting a moon colony and the exodus that spawned it, told by an assortment of unreliable narrators who can sometimes barely string a sentence together.
YES. FUCK YES.
From a storytelling perspective, this is already beautiful music. My creative synapses are all firey and tingle-happy thinking about the potential of this project as a collection of short stories written by an eccentric cabal of madman scribes.
As a hugely popular band, however, I can only imagine the deadness in their eyes. The group had last released the critically and commercially successful A.M. back in 2013 and after a lengthy hiatus — Turner proposed that the Arctic Monkeys deliver an obtuse concept record built around a style of music that hasn’t sold records since Tom Jones was in short pants.
The stories about the album’s creation leaves out the band’s immediate reaction — but what follows is the stuff of magic. They took Turner’s concept and embraced every lunar eccentricity. Taking a leap into the void with harpsichords, vintage keyboards and synthesizers, and a glib commitment to the bit that never reveals any shred of insincerity.
On “Four Out of Five” Turner waffles between crooning and falsetto temptations, his lyrics feel like drug-fueled whimsy — if they weren’t wielded with such precision and the poetic irony of a lounge singer banished to the universe’s nether regions.
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Come on in, the water’s lovely
Look, you could meet someone you like
During the meteor strike, it is that easy
Lunar surface on a Saturday night, dressed up in silver and white
With coloured Old Grey Whistle Test lights
Pitchfork mentions that during the writing of Tranquility Base, Turner immersed himself in David Foster Wallace and Neil Postman. It’s not just the sincerity of approach or just a commitment to the bit that creates this album’s specific magic. “Four Out of Five” staggers out from the middle of this record like a Greek chorus, an aside, a moment of casual lucidity in the middle of a Hunter S. Thompson drug trip. Turner never puts his cleverness in front of the musical orchestrations. The music comes first. As it unfurls and reveals its layers through multiple consumptions, only then does Turner’s torrent of ideas come forward.
On the album’s opening song, “Star Treatment,” this first lyrical volley sets the whole thing in motion.
I just wanted to be one of The Strokes
Now look at the mess you made me make
Hitchhiking with a monogrammed suitcase
Miles away from any half-useful imaginary highway
I’m a big name in deep space
Ask your mates but golden boy’s in bad shape
I found out the hard way
That here ain’t no place for dolls like you and me
Everybody’s on a barge
Floating down the endless stream of great TV
1984, 2019
I’ve been obsessed with it ever since I first put the record on my turntable and let it spin and spin and spin. And if I’m choosing (I guess I am) “Four Out of Five” it’s because it best represents the greater whole. I can’t pick 11 songs as 1, but I can pick 1 as 11.
If I must defend this record against some of those ignorant naysayers that cliff jumped after the Monkeys went “haywire,” I will do it thusly. I liked Arctic Monkeys before Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino. I took in a show after the release of A.M. back in 2014. I listened to their stuff, but they were never exactly a point of reference.
After hearing Tranquility Base, I became obsessed. I revisited every single song, studied the earlier records with greater focus. Tracked live variations of this and that. This eccentricity was always buried inside and if you’re still denying the charms of their lounge-era, you were never really listening to the Monkeys in the first place. We were all just distracted by the accessible flash and glam of a highly competent rock band. But don’t let that pop competency fool you — Alex Turner, Matt Helders, Jamie Cook, and Nick O’Malley are all Colonel Kurtzes. And therefore, we’re all just their errand boys sent by grocery clerks.
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