Arctic Monkeys - The Evolution of the Arctic Monkeys

The year 2000, the dawn of a new millennium. The collective hangover caused by Britpop seems to have worn off. British ears are pricked up towards the other side of the Atlantic. New York, The Strokes. The burden (and the hopes) of saving rock'n'roll are loaded onto the shoulders of the young band led by Julian Casablancas. “Is This It”, their debut album, has everyone crying miracle, and the Big Apple seems to spark back to life through sheer rock clatter. A payback against the subjects of Her Majesty, who for years had been exporting their musical delights across the ocean.

On British soil, nothing much is happening, everything seems quiet.

The summer of 2002 is approaching, and four friends from Sheffield, mired in the typical boredom of provincial life, find themselves at a crossroads. Alex and Matt have just finished college and are unsure whether to carry on with their respective academic paths, Jamie quit his job as a tiler in May, while Andy seems content enough living off unemployment benefit. While waiting to take the steps that would catapult them into the world of responsibilities, work and family, the four of them prefer instead to while away Sheffield's long grey days holed up in dark, damp basements playing the rock'n'roll coming from distant America. With no great pretensions or ambitions, the Arctic Monkeys are thus born, led by the not-yet-exploded talent of Alex Turner, at first limited to playing the part of the aforementioned Casablancas (AM started out as a Strokes cover band), before soon after, much to their own surprise, becoming Her Majesty's latest next big thing.

Sheffield fights back

Being from Sheffield must have played an important role in the birth of the Arctic Monkeys. In fact, starting in the 1980s, the steel capital became, along with Manchester, one of the UK's cultural epicentres, with a high percentage of its population linked in some way to the world of creativity.

And so the four young men began taking their first steps on this hyper-fertile ground, which in previous decades had established itself as a genuine breeding ground for bands and artists, from Jarvis Cocker and his Pulp to crooner Richard Hawley, from the electronics of Human League and Heaven 17 to the industrial sounds of Clock Dva and Cabaret Voltaire, which made Sheffield a reference point for the Yorkshire cultural scene.

After an initial run of live shows, we arrive at 2003: Alex & co. finally decide to hole up at Sheffield's 2fly Studios to record their first demos. These sessions produce no fewer than 17 unreleased tracks that would end up in the collection known as “Beneath The Boardwalk” (among them are songs that would soon become much more famous: “A Certain Romance”, “Cigarette Smoke”, “Dancin' Shoes”, “Fake Tales Of San Francisco”, “Mardy Bum”, “Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” and “Scummy”, later renamed “When The Sun Goes Down”), copies of which were handed out to the audience before and after the gigs that followed.

This move, calculated or not, leads to unexpected results. The first copies of the recordings spread like wildfire, so much so that a page bearing the band's name pops up on the social network Myspace, without the band even knowing about it. The viral effect first grabs the attention of the local tabloids, but it doesn't take long for Alex Turner's group to land on the front pages of Britain's most important music magazines, including NME.

The next big thing

When can a British rock band start to think it has some hope of standing out among the countless other bands from back home? Probably once NME puts you on its cover - that's the first big step toward stardom taken care of. It's May 2005, and the four kids from Sheffield appear for the first time on the cover of Britain's most important music monthly. Behind them, they have nothing but the aforementioned demo collection. No official releases, no EPs or LPs. Despite this, NME decides to bet on them, casting Arctic Monkeys as the standard-bearers of Yorkshire in response to the punk-rock movement led by the Libertines of Pete Doherty, which had meanwhile taken hold in the capital. As if that weren't enough, "little" Turner gets compared to the sacred monster Paul Weller. How many bands would have been able to withstand such weighty comparisons?

Audiences across the Channel already seemed to be bracing for the ashes of yet another band burned by the reckless, hungry demands of the British press. And yet, the following January, after the release of the EP "Five Minutes With Arctic Monkeys", the Monkeys put out their first full-length work, that Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (produced by the farsighted Domino) which, with 364,000 copies sold in its first week alone, would go on to dethrone Oasis and their "Definitely Maybe", claiming the title of "fastest-selling debut album" and earning a place in the Guinness World Records in the process.

Hype in music (especially British music) has always existed and will keep playing a decisive role in pushing a band to the crest of the wave. Even so, before some shows Turner would urge his audience to "don't believe the hype", even though in fact his Arctic Monkeys, thanks precisely to the internet and the viral spread of their songs, had managed to grab the attention of media and fans like nothing since the days of Britpop, when the Gallagher brothers and the Albarn–Coxon duo spent their time tearing each other apart on the tabloid front pages.

The success of Whatever People... is therefore indeed partly the result of the hype built up around Turner & co., but it also owes a lot to a musical proposition that's far from negligible. Drawing at times from the British punk school straddling the '70s and '80s, that is from modfather Paul Weller's Jam, at other times from the post-punk tailor-made to fill dancefloors courtesy of Franz Ferdinand, and drawing inspiration from the lyrical compositions of rappers like Mike Skinner (aka The Streets), the Sheffield four-piece's debut album strikes less through originality than through immediacy and energy. The winning formula is made up of cocky guitars (take those on the opening track "The View From The Afternoon" and the explosive "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor") accompanying lyrics capable of painting slices of typical English provincial life, which together form a kind of concept album centred on the lives of young clubbers in the north of England ("Dancing Shoes", "Riot Van", "When The Sun Goes Down"). It's precisely "When The Sun Goes Down", the second single, that helps carry the album forward, thanks to a new, intoxicating cocktail of taut guitars and sing-song vocals. Standing apart from the album's general mood is instead the quieter "A Certain Romance", only barely charged with a few flashes of electric guitar.

The praise and critical acclaim for Whatever People... (NME, with its usual restraint, went so far as to crown the Sheffield four-piece "the most important band of our generation") pushed the band onto stages across the whole of the UK, and in next to no time the four of them landed their first dates outside their home country. It's hard for a group barely in their twenties to withstand such impact, and sure enough, just before setting off on their US tour, bassist Andy Nicholson pays the price, announcing he's leaving the band to return to "little" Sheffield. He's replaced by Nick O'Malley.

Favourite Worst Nightmare

Acclaimed and lionised by press and public alike, between late 2005 and the early months of 2007 Arctic Monkeys racked up a long string of nominations and awards, including Best British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards and Best British Band at the NME Awards. They now present themselves with a new line-up, ready to release, just a year on from their triumphant (at least within British borders) debut, their second album.

Over the previous year the Sheffield outfit had rapidly become a media phenomenon, had known how to make the most of it, and had been the spark that let the Yorkshire town shine as it hadn't in years, spawning promising young bands (Little Man Tate, Millburn, Harrisons, Reverend and the Makers above all).

Favourite Worst Nightmare comes out in April 2007 and represents a hurdle Alex Turner's band needs to clear in order to confirm themselves and shake off the label of yet another flash in the pan of British music.

Moving in the same direction as the debut album, the twelve tracks of Favourite Worst Nightmare nevertheless manage to skilfully juggle jagged guitars and the explosiveness of Matt Helders' pummelled drums, while Turner's compositional talent finds its definitive confirmation.

From the very first single lifted from the record, titled "Brainstorm", as if to underline the band's intent to start again from scratch, it's clear the Monkeys have no intention of resting on their laurels. The track is clad in a roaring bodywork of angular, clattering guitars, and stays trapped in the coils of a single riff repeated relentlessly until it reaches total saturation.

The press described their sound as "very, very fast and very, very loud" compared to their first effort (which certainly wasn't lacking in those two departments either), and tracks like "Teddy Picker", with its acidic colours and geometric rhythmic progression, the glamorous "D Is For Dangerous" and "Old Yellow Bricks" (its guitar seemingly ripped, still bleeding, straight out of "When The Sun Goes Down") only confirm that description. But the new record also makes room for novelty and for more polished, "vintage" sounds (for instance the galloping "The Bad Thing", the floating ballad "Only Ones Who Know", the more complex "If You Were There, Beware" and the cinematic "505"), which opened up new directions in the path taken by the Sheffield four-piece.

In "Fluorescent Adolescent", on the other hand, the band returns to the streets it knows best, crafting a fine example of sober, steady brit-rock, suspended somewhere between Blur and Supergrass, while "Do Me A Favour" reveals a more anguished streak and a greater imagination in shaping the structure of the melodies.

Favourite Worst Nightmare is a kind of impromptu party with neither beginning nor end, a flow of bodies and disjointed movements and electricity, an unruly derailment of all the senses, or a journey to the end of the night, which perhaps unwittingly echoes the great baggy utopia of the Stone Roses' "Fools Gold" or Primal Scream's "Loaded". The impression is of a band clearly determined to enrich the elements and stylistic range of its sound, through a more or less heavy use of special effects and clever bits of computer-graphics trickery.

The Last Shadow Puppets: following in the footsteps of the Style Council

This is the direction Alex Turner actually takes, stepping away from his Monkeys and diving into a new band called The Last Shadow Puppets, alongside him his friend and colleague Miles Kane, frontman of the Liverpudlian Rascals. Also involved in the project, as producer (and drummer), is the indie-production Midas touch James Ford (also of Simian Mobile Disco). But the most interesting element of this hugely ambitious record is something else entirely: the use, on every track, of a lavish orchestra (the London Metropolitan Orchestra, to be precise), conducted by Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, who also wrote all the arrangements). It's also worth noting that most of the recording took place in France, far from the noise and the London high life.

The fruit of this collaboration, The Age Of The Understatement, came out in April 2008 and marks a genuine change of course in Turner's musical path. The frantic, electric rhythms give way to orchestrations and baroque arrangements harking back to 1960s cinema. Whereas up to that point the Arctic Monkeys had been associated with artists and bands like the Gallagher brothers, the Jam or the Clash, now the names being invoked belong to a more classic, polished musical world: Burt Bacharach, Ray Davies, Elvis Costello and Serge Gainsbourg. Turner, in other words, is growing up for real, and the music of The Last Shadow Puppets mirrors that evolution, closely recalling the cool sophistication of his "mentor" Paul Weller in the days of the Style Council.

A soft spot for ballads and a particular fondness for melancholy moods had already been evident in the Arctic Monkeys since their earliest records, but here it's pushed to the extreme, with far greater attention paid to the quality of the sonic dressing. There's no shortage of standout moments on this front: from the Morricone-like echoes of "The Age Of The Understatement" to the blissful chord progression of "Standing Next To Me", by way of the subtle eroticism of the excellent "The Chamber" (though "My Mistakes Were Made For You" is no slouch either) and the more elaborate structure of "I Don't Like You Anymore", which reworks the ideas of the old hit "When The Sun Goes Down" through a new sensibility.

Here and there, more baroque-tinged passages surface, like "Only The Truth" or "Black Pant", interspersed with tracks where a faint whiff of James Bond-style soundtrack starts to creep in ("In My Room", for instance).

More vintage Bordeaux, in short, than unassuming lager. Because sometimes the real revolution (as this record makes clear) is tradition itself.

Josh Homme and the stoner turn

Changes, mutations and stylistic and sonic evolutions come together in late summer 2008 in what would become the third chapter of the Sheffield band, Humbug. For that to happen, though, they first need a change of scenery. Turner and co. decide to pack their bags and move to the Mojave Desert, to the Rancho de La Luna studio, in the company of the shady character who goes by the name of Josh Homme.

The recording sessions, overseen by the aforementioned Queens Of The Stone Age frontman, kick off in November, and right from the start the four Sheffield lads make it clear that the typically British sound would give way to huge riffs and massive grooves straight out of the Black Sabbath playbook ("My Propeller", "Crying Lightning", "Potion Approaching"). The neat mop-top haircuts of the loyal little mods are replaced by thick, long manes. The Fred Perry jackets and Adidas trainers get put away in the closet, and the first leather jackets and ankle boots start to appear.

At the same time, the band's new sonic direction is unmistakable. The rhythms now feel slower and more spread out, and the guitars, less clattering, venture into psychedelic, floating territory ("Fire And The Thud", "Dance Little Liar"). Once again, the reaction from critics and the fan base is overwhelmingly positive (aside from a few dissenting voices lamenting the lack of tracks with an infectious drive).

Humbug, ultimately, stands as proof of an artistic maturity the Sheffield band has fully achieved, and a turning point born out of the need to escape their stifling hometown in search of new, exciting, and risky paths. A "transitional" album, a hypothetical bridge between a past that perhaps no longer belongs to the Sheffield band and a still-hazy future that Turner and co. will have to decide how to shape.

Before the next chapter of his band, Turner finds a way to put out a brand-new record that bears, for the first time, his own full name. The opportunity comes via the soundtrack to a Richard Ayoade film, to which he contributed six original, self-penned compositions, collected on a mini-album sharing the film's title, Submarine.

Sheffield's boy wonder, certainly one of the most gifted English songwriters of his generation, has for some time now been living more or less permanently in America, where he moved to follow the TV commitments of his gorgeous girlfriend Alexa Chung; and yet, listening to tracks like "Stuck On The Puzzle" or "Piledriver Waltz", what echoes in the listener's ears is the glorious, towering lineage of John Lennon, Ray Davies, Paul Weller or Noel Gallagher. There's no getting around it, the kid's got the goods, and he's certainly not one to be led by the hand, aiming instead for the lean, elegant shape of songs that are genuinely enjoyable for their understated, acoustic sketch-like quality (verging almost on Badly Drawn Boy territory, just listen to "Glass In The Park") and for that never-hidden (and thoroughly British) taste for overcast mornings spent watching the hazy light and the uniform green of freshly mown English lawns.

While waiting for the Arctic Monkeys' fourth outing, this stay in a suspended submarine turns out to be unexpectedly enchanting.

The knockout that never came

In 2005, few would have bet on what was shaping up to be just another of the many next big things destined to flame out in next to no time. And yet, album after album, Arctic Monkeys kept proving themselves and their abilities. Reaching a fourth album, after passing the test of consolidation (second record) and that of maturity (third), shows just how firmly the four lads from Sheffield have kept control of their own future, refusing to be chewed up by the ruthless grinding machines of the press and the major labels.

Always maintaining a certain independence, Alex, Matt, Jamie and Nick arrive at the threshold of 2011 confident they have little left to lose.

Suck It And See (2011), released in June and recorded, like its predecessor, on Californian soil, feels like an attempt to bridge the gap between their first two dizzying, galloping records and the more psychedelic, polished Humbug. Josh Homme is no longer behind the desk (just a friendly cameo on "All My Own Stunts"), replaced by their beloved longtime collaborator James Ford, yet the thoroughly Californian genesis of the new songs is immediately and effortlessly audible (just listen to "Suck It And See"), alongside another far-from-minor element: never before have Arctic Monkeys sounded so much like a bunch of lads killing time embroidering nostalgic digressions on themselves, holed up in the crypt-like shelter of their own rehearsal room.

The result, which nonetheless makes this the Yorkshire band's weakest release, is a weave of driving guitars and rhythms ("Library Pictures", "Brick By Brick"), acoustic ballads ("Reckless Serenade", "Suck It And See", "Piledriver Waltz") and amphetamine-fuelled trips through the arid Joshua Tree desert ("Don't Sit Down Cause I've Moved Your Chair", "She's Thunderstorms").

The album's economy is redeemed above all by its ballads, chief among them the moving, deeply felt opener "She's Thunderstorms" and the pained, beautiful closer "That's Where You're Wrong". But a washed-out sentimental impressionism often seeps through, proof that too many side collaborations and parallel projects had ended up scattering Turner's inspiration into a thousand little streams, each one running shorter and shorter.

Suck It And See shoots straight to number one in the UK, leapfrogging the likes of Adele and Lady Gaga in one go. And yet it sounds like a polite but unmistakable refusal of a moral leadership role they never really sought. Eight years on from their debut, many devoted fans of British rock expected Arctic Monkeys to land the decisive blow, the one that would crown them as the last true rock band of Albion. Instead, that coronation would have to wait for the release of AM, the Sheffield band's fifth effort, due out in September 2013.

The last great rock classic

With "AM", Arctic Monkeys kept their usual overflowing compositional output and their unmatched knack for writing great songs, but at the same time, aided by their trusted producer James Ford, they pushed their sound in two seemingly irreconcilable directions. Turner himself described the sound of "AM" as "Dr. Dre meets Black Sabbath".

It's a spot-on description, because on "AM" the Monkeys' garage-leaning indie rock dresses itself in hard rock heaviness and bluesy languor, but also in hip-hop and r&b influences firmly rooted in its own era, resulting in a record able to speak to multiple generations of fans. Put that way it sounds like an oxymoron, but everything becomes crystal clear right from the opening attack of the opener "Do I Wanna Know?".

The drums come in hypnotic, kick drum dry and dark. The guitar slithers along, elastic and sharp, trailing a sense of mystery over everything it touches. Turner first plays the seasoned crooner, then switches to falsetto, tormentedly wondering, with a refined vocabulary unfamiliar to most of his contemporaries, whether the object of his desire feels the same pull towards him. It's an entirely new atmosphere for the Arctic Monkeys, night-tinted and sexy in its swagger. Yet it's a suit that fits them perfectly. The riff is delivered in unison by two guitars with a rough-edged tone and, despite its composite nature, has by now become iconic.

It's a highly elaborate riff, so much so that it's hard to say whether it's actually a single twenty-seven-note riff or a string of small phrases played one after another. Notably, live Turner manages to play it while singing over it at the same time: a feat of coordination that's anything but simple. Voice and guitar never start their respective phrases at the same moment, and neither ever lands on the downbeat. There's great freedom here, but above all an outstanding sense of rhythm.

"R U Mine?" is the first single, released back in 2012, over a year before "AM" came out. It marks a clear shift away from the more psychedelic experiments of "Humbug" and the singer-songwriter leanings of "Suck It And See": this is probably the hardest rock track the band had released up to that point. The energy the band unleashes channels the anger and frustration born from the uncertain shape of a romantic relationship. "Are you mine?" Turner asks, gripped by fear and fury, while guitar, bass and drums set fire to everything like never before.

Once again, the vocal meter is particularly irregular, with a rhythmic delivery of the lyrics that feels almost like a stream of consciousness, especially in the verses. The most musically interesting aspect is the lively 'duel' between voice and guitar: while the guitar riff's accents all land on the beat, on the strong beats of the bar, the vocal accents fall on the offbeat.

Worth noting too is Matt Helders' excellent drum arrangement: in the chorus especially there's almost no fixed rhythmic pattern, with countless fills and transitions. It's a way of approaching the drums that recalls, above all, a figure like Keith Moon.

"One For The Road" further deepens and expands the mix of r&b and indie rock. Particularly noteworthy is the guitar solo, modulated with a phaser effect and marked, technically speaking, by the use of many rather risky legato runs: live especially, it's easy to hit a wrong note while sliding your fingers along the fretboard, even over long stretches. Named after the mythical drink that closes out a night, it's perhaps the most elegant song of the bunch, with a mysterious gait and a blanket of highly cinematic effects and backing vocals. It's a track that takes shape as images in your mind as you listen, thanks to the band's ability to pair such an evocative sound with Turner's skilful words.

"Arabella" is a fine variation on "Do I Wanna Know": where the latter had a sound more geared towards garage rock, dirty and loaded with fuzz distortion, "Arabella" has distortion that's just as powerful but far more defined. This is especially evident in the track's nod to/quotation of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs". What makes this sensual ode to a sort of interstellar muse, a universal embodiment of desire ("Arabella's got some interstellar-gator skin boots"), as well as one of the band's most beloved and recognisable songs, are undoubtedly the guitar dynamics between verses, choruses and solos. In the latter, the guitar explodes and then pounces like a cat, unleashing pirouettes and wild runs. Often underrated as a player, Nick O'Malley takes centre stage here: it's his bass, commanding and all-encompassing in the mix, that holds the reins of the track, at least on the verse riff.

"N.1 Party Anthem" and "Mad Sounds" are two ballads that ward off any potential monotony, reworking a few classic rock topoi and dragging them into third-millennium indie rock. The former vaguely recalls the chord progression of "The Air That I Breathe" by the Hollies, later echoed by Radiohead's "Creep" (Radiohead), but quickly breaks away from it, broadening its range of harmonic solutions. It's also a song rich in references: alongside the aforementioned ones, thanks to its somewhat laid-back, cocky vocal delivery, it also brings to mind the smoothest ballads of Blur. "Mad Sounds", on the other hand, carries echoes of Lou Reed ("Pale Blue Eyes" in particular), reworked in a highly personal way. Harmonium, velvety bass and hints of tambourine make it the softest, sweetest core of the record, which turns out to be anything but a composite creature made solely of hard-rock bangers.

"Fireside" is perhaps the track where Turner's crooner-style vocals can best be appreciated: this style, marked by heavy use of vibrato, has been rather rarely used in recent decades, especially in such a polished way. It's a one-off within the tracklist: Bowie-esque, singer-songwriter-like, yet not quite a true ballad. On the contrary, the song is urgent, dramatic, and to be convinced of that one need only listen to the drum arrangement, with its relentless phrasing on the toms. The arrangement of "Fireside" is one of the most elaborate on the record: acoustic guitar, organ, electric guitars, call-and-response backing vocals, harpsichord, and various other keyboards or studio effects can all be heard, especially in the closing section. It's a hidden gem of the album, ready to disprove anyone claiming "AM" is a one-note record resting on the same winning formula, and also a track that strongly contrasts, thematically too, with the songs that open the album: where the opening roars of "AM" are dominated by desire, fear, sensuality and jittery guitars, in the precious yet melancholy arrangements of "Fireside" Turner speaks of absence, memory and remorse. The song is indeed a kind of stream of consciousness and remembrance, eyes fixed and lost in the fireplace flames that give the track its title.

"Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High" is paradigmatic of Turner's songwriting style, one of the most original voices in indie rock and beyond. The vocal always comes in off the beat, with sudden slowdowns and accelerations (for instance on the line: "Incapable of making alright decisions"). In some ways Turner almost comes across here as a rapper rather than a classic rock vocalist. Indeed, around the voice, the rhythm section makes explicit the influence of hip hop classics like Dr. Dre, in terms of production, mixing (the kick pushed well forward in the mix) and the drums' rhythmic patterns.

Although "AM" is an album steeped in American influences and recorded in Los Angeles, it remains, after all, an album by an English band: "Snap Out Of It", with its music hall-style marching gait, is the perfect fusion of alternative R&B and the psychedelic pop season of 1960s Britain, with the Kinks at the forefront.

"Knee Socks" stands out harmonically for its use of the Andalusian progression, and above all for the excellent contribution of Josh Homme of Queens of The Stone Age on vocals. Equally remarkable is the way, in the closing section, Turner's lead vocal, the falsetto backing vocals and the special guest all blend together, his vocal versatility used in defiance of whatever one might expect from the stoner icon, and thus put entirely to the service of creating a sweaty, erotic mood.

The case of "I Wanna Be Yours" is a curious one: although it was never released as a single, it has over time become their most-streamed track on Spotify by far. Based on a text by Manchester punk poet John Cooper Clarke, it's a very slow ballad, marked by an arrangement with sensual, dark tones: the guitars, for instance, carry an almost spectral, extremely long reverb, which makes them sound almost like keyboard pads. It's an effect the Monkeys achieve too, albeit to a lesser extent, in "I Want It All", where, however, true to the title, the pace is combative, close to a certain stoner heaviness, a passion the band — who had given us the tough "Humbug" — never quite let go of.

A phenomenon like "AM" inevitably feeds on more than just music alone. Thinking of Arctic Monkeys today, one inevitably pictures them exactly as they dressed around 2013. The musical shift coincided with a transformation in look too, one that likewise moved closer to the genre's traditional iconography. Indie casual clothes gave way to vintage leather jackets, skinny trousers and, in Turner's case, a slicked-back quiff. Almost as if the kid from Sheffield had given way to some kind of postmodern mash-up of Elvis Presley and James Dean.

High fashion, too, took notice of the Monkeys at that point, to the extent that the wardrobe for the 2013/14 tour was curated by Yves Saint Laurent — in the era of star creative director Hedi Slimane. This, along with other factors, such as the relentless use of social media to spread new content, led to the band reaching an audience that went well beyond musical boundaries. Just as the influences channelled by the band in creating "AM" were manifold, so too are its many disciples, both aesthetic and musical — think of Royal Blood, Nothing But Thieves, The 1975, and even a certain Harry Styles.

The Turner-centric turn

In May 2018 came the much-debated Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino, an album in which Alex Turner's personality takes precedence over the band's own history. In fact, that's precisely the first positive note: the shrug this record represents towards its predecessor, a blockbuster that, five years earlier, had left behind an uncomfortable media overexposure for the reclusive frontman to deal with. With the Last Shadow Puppets experience (Last Shadow Puppets) over after a second album and a world tour in 2016, and struggling to draw fresh creative stimulus from his beloved guitar, Alex chose instead to turn to the Steinway Vertegrand his manager had given him for his thirtieth birthday, finding on its keys a new compositional lifeblood. The result of the new writing and composing sessions, which took place at Turner's house in Los Angeles, is the record we find ourselves listening to, produced as ever alongside his trusted James Ford.

We're talking about a fairly disappointing record. While the premise was promising, and the choice to take a risk by upending the band's own stylistic conventions is certainly commendable, the result is not: what we're left with is a band — or rather, an author — decidedly out of focus. Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is so Turner-centric that it becomes dependent on him, starting with the arrangements, all leaning towards a bland piano-rock devoid of any particular spark, serving only to accompany Alex's words and voice, this time around vaguely Bowie-esque in approach. The latter, much like the harmonic textures it rests on, often stretches out into structures that drag on too long, ending up boring rather than enveloping the listener. The frontman himself, moreover, no longer seems to be singing for the audience, nor for himself, but for his own reflection in the mirror: you can almost picture him, admiring his own poses, a narcissistic crooner of his privileged life. The lyrics he croons, meanwhile, amount to the rather pathetic ramblings of a misunderstood star, which, rather than stirring empathy, generate only distance and disinterest.

The idea behind the arrangements would seem to be to set these compositions in the melancholy, decadent Hollywood of a few decades ago, along the lines, so to speak, of recent work by Lana Del Rey and Tobias Jesso Jr. The piano-bar aesthetic, the polished sheen and the deliberately retro dress of these songs, however, come across as flat and stereotypical, perhaps also because they're let down by being in service of rather middling compositions. The album — strange as it is to write this about artists of this stature — works better as a lounge-pop product than as a work meant to draw you in and move you. As background music, it's pleasant enough, but it's a bit dispiriting that a band like Arctic Monkeys, who belong in the pantheon of contemporary rock, should today be beholden to their leader's whims and unable to offer something more stimulating.

On Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, what saves it from being a total letdown are the individual tracks: the measured gait and vocal blends of "Four Out Of Five" wouldn't have been out of place on Humbug; the elegant art-pop of "The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip" would delight Grizzly Bear; the psych-pop ups and downs of "Golden Trunks" and "She Looks Like Fun" alone outshine the Last Shadow Puppets' latest record; and the closing, Lennon-esque "The Ultracheese", though tied to a few melodic clichés, works beautifully as a romantic farewell. But these are just small flashes of light in a record that is for the most part hazy and monochrome, a work shaped by Turner's own authoritarian taste, yet one that only highlights his current confusion and lack of ideas.

In December 2020, Arctic Monkeys released their first live album, Live At The Royal Albert Hall. The project has a charitable angle, since all proceeds from the record's sales (as well as from tickets to the concert, held on 7 June 2018) go to War Child UK. The twenty songs on the setlist trace pretty much every stage of the Sheffield band's career, from the early days, well represented by "The View From The Afternoon", "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" and "From The Ritz To The Rubble", through to the later albums (the versions of "Cornerstone" and "Don't Sit Down 'Cause I've Moved Your Chair" are lovely). Of particular interest — and it could hardly be otherwise — are the versions drawn from the last two studio albums. It's in this part of the repertoire that Turner's vocal talents shine brightest, remarkably versatile on "Arabella", "One Point Perspective" and "Star Treatment", and very close to the idea of a "crooner" on tracks such as "Do I Wanna Know", "Four Out Of Five" and a striking version of "Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino".

Beyond the renditions that will delight the band's vast fanbase, "Live At The Royal Albert Hall" is a snapshot of one of the most important bands of the 21st century captured in a moment of absolute grace.

The chameleonic string of transformations undergone by Turner and co. continues with The Car (2022), the seventh album in the career of the Artic Monkeys, which strikes with its unmistakably cinematic feel right from the cover art, a shot by drummer Matt Helders depicting a solitary white car in the distance, parked on a rooftop in Los Angeles. Inspired mainly by the work of William Eggleston, the father of color art photography, the image is so precisely composed that it looks almost like a diorama, a reconstruction of settings typical of a branch of staged photography in which the photographer also acts as puppeteer of the entire scene (think of the silent, surreal cityscapes of Frank Kunert).

Thanks to the photographs shared with Turner, the band arrived at the writing of the song "The Car," establishing a starting point from which to develop the rest of the record. The quartet moves beyond the psychedelia-steeped science fiction of their previous outing and returns to Earth with clearer, more defined sounds, accompanied by the band's trademark wordplay loaded with double and triple meanings in the lyrics.

The main sonic influences range from the avant-garde of Japan and solo David Sylvian, to funk and soul excursions à-la David Bowie and the art-rock of "Imperial Bedroom," all set against a backdrop of sophisticated pop reminiscent of Blue Nile and Prefab Sprout. The album's pace is set by the orchestral pop of the sinuous strings and piano on "There'd Better Be A Mirrorball," and by the seventies funk groove and backing vocals of "I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am," but it's the irresistible slow ballad "Body Paint" that draws most of the attention. Though it may raise an eyebrow at first, a connecting thread to the band's past can be traced, linking it to an evolution of the more adolescent "Love Is A Laserquest" in terms of pacing, and of "Dance Little Liar" in terms of lyrics, proof that the quartet's chosen direction can be seen as consistent.

The ambient-tinged atmospheres of "Sculptures Of Anything Goes," caught between Sylvian and Brian Eno and propped up by synths and a drum machine, along with the jazzy "Jet Skis On The Moat," display all the hallmarks of a film score. The glam rock streak lent by the guitar solo on "The Car" comes as a surprise, opening the second half of the record, where the sound tends to flatten out somewhat, sticking to what's already been laid out in the earlier tracks and exposing the album's one weak spot, against otherwise near-perfect writing and arrangements: Turner's slightly monotonous turn as a crooner. "Big Ideas" leans on orchestral swells with a guitar riff in its closing section, while "Hello You" sits between funk and soul, before the record winds down with the fingerstyle arpeggios of "Mr Schwartz" and the Beatles-esque strings, in the vein of "The Long And Winding Road," on "Perfect Sense."

More assured than its predecessor, The Car marks the decisive turning point in the Arctic Monkeys' maturing process - quite different, perhaps, from what we might have expected years ago, but which, after repeated listens and close analysis, ultimately fits the band's natural evolution (Turner-centric detours, however divisive, included), far removed from the dynamics of today's music industry, which would perhaps rather immortalize them as eternal boys, forever riding the crest of the indie-garage wave.

Contributions by Michele Corrado ("AM"), Giacomo Rivoira ("AM"), Tommaso Benelli ("Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino"), Fabio Guastalla ("Live At The Royal Albert Hall"), Martina Vetrugno ("The Car")

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