Review: Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino by Arctic Monkeys

Brave, original, and endlessly rewarding, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino is the gift that keeps on giving. But have the Arctic Monkeys gone too far for most fans?

It’s been five long years since the last Arctic Monkeys’ album dropped. You can’t help but think there’s a reason for that. When their last album — AM (2013) — was released, the band took the world by storm in a way that they’ve never quite achieved before. As of writing, the band has now enjoyed well over two billion streams on Spotify alone. AM’s lead singles Do I Wanna Know?, R U Mine? and Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? together tally a billion streams. For the Arctic Monkeys, this was unheard of success previous to 2013.

So with such wind in their sails, the fact that the band dropped off the radar after a string of stadium-filling tours has been suspicious, especially as the first five Arctic Monkeys albums were released periodically. It begs the question, did the pressure of following up such a blockbuster album harry the band’s creativity?

If Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino is anything to go by, a lack of creativity has been the least of the band’s worries. Yet again, the band has mercilessly pursued reinvention, much as they have done since their 2009 effort Humbug, with its splash of Josh Homme-inspired desert rock.

But for many fans, this new album may feel like a step too far. Long gone are the boisterous youths of the mid-2000s, just as the ‘saviours of rock’ that dominated AM have been relegated. For the most part the overpowering indie guitar sound has in fact been well and truly blown out the airlock. In its place, we have the lounge singer, and melodies layered upon melodies to create dense, smart and rewarding experiences. And Alex Turner’s influences are notably different this time, too. ‘I just wanted to be one of the Strokes / now look at the mess you’ve made me make,’ he croons on the album’s opener Star Treatment, rebuking obvious past influences. But Turner’s new heroes are palpably omnipresent — either Serge Gainsbourg, the Beach Boys or Dion may as well be listed as the spiritual fifth band member this time round.

Behind the band’s abrupt trajectory change is the piano. In 2016, the band’s manager gave Turner a Steinway Vertegrand piano. On it, Turner wrote all eleven of Tranquility Base’s songs — alone. Perhaps it would have been better to keep it as a solo project, but as an Arctic Monkeys album it is so much richer.

So while there are plenty of instruments at play here, it is the simple piano melodies that are the backbone of the entire album — sometimes overtly, sometimes not. Nevertheless, this piano makes the album unmistakably lounge music, with just a sprinkling of indie to it. Every other instrument is layered around this backbone. It gives space for the percussion, bass and guitar, synth, organ, and even Turner’s voice to play with sound in ways the Arctic Monkeys have never done before.

And it’s this playfulness that drives Tranquility Base forward. You can hear Jamie Cook, Nick O’Malley and Matt Helders having as much fun as Turner here. The crawling bass on Golden Trunks, the funky guitar on Four Out of Five, and the rationed flurries of percussion throughout the album make listening an absolute treat. You’re hooked from the beginning right to the end, if nothing more than to see where the experiment travels next.

Literary influences on the album — including David Foster Wallace and George Saunders — surely encourage this experimentation, at least as much as the musical influences do. But the issue with Tranquility Base is that the songs are devoid of obvious characters or emotional tethers. There is a loose theme in the hotel, and cultural references and ideas are scattered throughout the album much like a novel. But these don’t tie the album together as well as they could. The songs are unlike the masterful vignettes — like A Certain Romance and Mardy Bum — that made the first album so popular. Instead, the lyrics flow as a stream of consciousness, with Turner even saying ‘I’ll now share with you through cloudy skies / Every whimsical thought that enters my mind.’ Occasionally this style works — as in Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino — but not always. That’s the trouble with a stream of consciousness: you need a relatable character at its centre.

Elsewhere, we have breaks in the fourth wall too. On Science Fiction we have the aside, ‘I want to talk about peace and love, but not in an obvious way’. Intellect and playfulness of this kind in songwriting is hard to find nowadays, but for that reason it will make it difficult for casual listeners to enjoy. This possibility hasn’t escaped Turner’s notice though. ‘I tried to write a song to make you blush,’ he also says on Science Fiction, ‘but I’ve a feeling that the whole thing / may well just end up being too clever for its own good.’ The constant cultural references will, to many, make it just that. The rewards come when you’re patient and you delve deeper.

That’s because this album does contain some of Turner’s best lyrics to date. Here is poetry. Granted, obvious characters are missing, but if you’re willing to look beyond that and bask in the sheer sounds of the lyrics and the music, it is a different experience entirely. In She Looks Like Fun, just listen to the way Turner belts out ‘cheeseburger’, ‘snowboarding’ and ‘Bukowski’ and the way he revels in the poetry of it. Then there are the one-liners. In turns, Turner is self-deprecating enough to joke about being a rock star (Star Treatment), and he’s brave enough to take on politics (One Point Perspective, Golden Trunks) and technology (Batphone) too. He even laughs at attempts to decipher his lyrics in the final song, Ultracheese, claiming ‘I might look as if I’m deep in thought / but the truth is I’m probably not, if I ever was.’ There’s plenty here to savour, lyrically and musically — after all, this is the most artistic the Arctic Monkeys have ever been.

While Arctic Monkeys may have acquired a wider audience than ever before with AM, this new effort will deter many of those expecting more of the same. (Though if you had been paying attention, this new reinvention would come as no surprise.) While they shouldn’t shy away from the lounge music on offer, many listeners, craven as they are for singles rather than albums, won’t have the patience to persevere here. But they should. Because with its sheer ambition, relentless pursuit of melody and lyrical playfulness, it’s absolute quality.

Four Stars Out of Five

4/5

Want to purchase Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino? Head over to the official Arctic Monkeys website now.