Album of the Week #10/ Riff Album Challenge
Soundtracking Submarine: A coming-of-age classic.
Why Alex Turner’s Submarine EP remains one of my favourite releases of all time.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Richard Ayoade’s indie coming-of-age classic, Submarine. Chances are you’ve seen it if you’re an Arctic Monkeys fan and came for Alex Turner’s simplistically scored soundtrack. That was certainly how I had discovered this movie, and music along with it.
I had been a fan of the Arctic Monkeys since I had left Edinburgh in middle school, recently returning to Canada due to my parent’s various career changes. By the time I had made it to high school, their fifth album, AM had taken over the alternative rock world. The black-clad, pop-laden riffs, ribboned with Turner’s velvet vocals was addictive and hooked people into their music. It certainly marked a very different shift away from the lad-laden, nightclub-ridden themes of their first two albums. Turner’s lyrics, however, remained just as clever as ever.
In that 2013–2014 storm that was the Arctic Monkeys, I came across Turner’s little old EP whilst I was branching out to some of their other projects. Despite knowing next to nothing about the movie, this six-song soundtrack was so captivating in its delivery. There’s a whimsical charm to it, and the quaint analogies of young love that are peppered throughout are striking when compared to the intensity of Turner’s songwriting with the Arctic Monkeys; It’s much softer in its delivery, less in your face. It exudes this seaside nostalgia of a windswept Welsh town in the 80s or 90s.
This is exactly why I fell in love with the film. I had listened to the soundtrack hundreds of times before seeing it, but there’s something really special about seeing an album that brings back so many memories fitted to film. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Submarine is a comedy-drama about fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate who live in a coastal Welsh town, trying to fix his parent’s failing marriage and navigating one of his first romantic relationships, it is a testament to how much we overthink, hyperbolize and romanticize our lives in adolescence; a throwback to how we thought so many things mattered, but inevitably and unsurprisingly, they don’t.
Turner’s soundtrack perfectly encapsulating these themes. His songs play with space and sparse instrumentation, usually only having a guitar, drums and a bass. They accent the awkward and introspective nature of Tate as a character and Ayoade’s eccentric shots. Lines like “I have been searching from the bottom to the top, for such a sight as the one I caught when I saw your // Fingers dimming the light” are idealistic as they are romantic, in a nondescript way.
There’s wisdom in Turner’s words as well, as he croons that “it’s like you’re tryin’ to get to Heaven ina hurry // and the queue was short than you thought it would be // and the doorman says, “You need to get a wristband”. I feel like Turner is an older version of Oliver Tate, or perhaps the vocalization of his inner thoughts. These creative connections to romance and death are lighthearted in their delivery, but heavy in their meaning. I feeling that I think very much permeates through this film.
I don’t think I necessarily clued into this when I was obsessed with this album. But as I get older each year and grow, I find that there is always something new or different with these songs. An element I didn't think of in a certain way, or approach with a different angle. I’m a big believer that songs don’t always have a concrete meaning, they’re subjective to the individual. While there are many memories tied to these songs I’d rather forget about, their impact on my development is important. It got me to look deeper into what I listen to, and to begin to appreciate how much music can make a difference in movies.
Turner’s short, yet sweet soundtrack brings me back to the I spent in the UK, and moved away to other pastures. It reminds me of navigating many situations as a teenager that in the end, had little impact on my future. Like the film, there really isn't a sense of finality to this record, and that’s okay. I’m just as happy to watch it every year, knowing that I’ll be discovering something new.
