Arctic Monkeys
The Car

With "Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino", now four years ago, the Arctic Monkeys made a sensational shift in their career, taking the bull by the horns and making a daring U-turn that inevitably split critics and the fanbase.

If the former was much more lenient, the more hardline fans of the early days did not forgive the "misdeed". But after all, great art is almost always divisive, as per the best tradition, and Alex Turner knows this. A few weeks before the release of this new "The Car", drummer Matt Helders was blunt and unequivocal: "it will never be like 'R U Mine' again", and indeed it isn't. Despite everything, frontman Alex Turner had tried again a guitar approach to writing (although different from what was proposed in the now essential "AM"), but he felt that the songs "didn't want to go in that direction".

So Turner returns to his Los Angeles studio, the Lunar Surface, and starts composing using half piano and half acoustic guitar, saving from the previous sessions only an initial version of "Hello You"; only when he had composed the instrumental part of what would later be the first single of the album, "There'd Better Be A Mirrorball", did he realize he had found the right formula, and he moved with the band to a remote castle in Suffolk to put it all together.

At that point, their trusted longtime collaborators join the game: ally James Ford returns at the controls, Tom Rowley of Milburn co-writes two pieces of the album while Tyler Parkford of Mini Mansions contributes to the backing vocals. The orchestral arrangements, a fundamental part of the new course, are entrusted to Bridget Samuels, already active in the film industry.

And so "The Car" is born, a sort of evolution of the previous album; this time no sci-fi fascinations, as declared by Turner himself, they return to Earth and the task of starting the dance is entrusted precisely to the aforementioned single, a sort of bridge with the previous work and its subdued and paced atmospheres. Turner's vocal performance is (not surprisingly) massive, and shows a reached maturity that is incredible. "Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am" certifies the return of the much-coveted guitar, although not exactly as loudly requested by early fans: a nicely present wah-wah veins the entire track with funk, adding variety and color and introducing the listener to the masterpiece of the album, the very dark "Sculptures Of Anything Goes", led by a synthesizer score kindly provided by the band's guitarist Jamie Cook.

The second single "Body Paint" is the most radio-friendly track, and the only one equipped with a true chorus (there's a lot of McCartney in this case), as well as a guitar very present in a pyrotechnical and impeccable finale. And then the Morricone fascinations of the title track, the delightful bossa of "Mr Schwartz", the Scott Walker-like flair of "Jet Skis On The Moat" and "Big Ideas", the superlative orchestrations of the spot-on closure "Perfect Sense".

Side note for the beautiful cover photo, taken in Los Angeles and shot by drummer Matt Helders using a Leica, in an attempt to test an old 90mm lens.

Best track: Sculptures Of Anything Goes