Rating: 3/5
After four years since their last release, the Arctic Monkeys have made their highly anticipated return with an underwhelming project that left me with only one thought: That’s it?
“The Car” is the British quartet’s seventh studio album and was released on Oct. 21, 2022. Their previous album, “Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino,” signified the rock band’s departure from their widely beloved alternative/punk rock sound through their experimentation with jazzy piano, lighter vocals, and cinematic strings. “The Car” only solidified this sonic shift by carrying on many of these elements in a much more stripped back, yet ultimately dull way.
The album opens with atmospheric piano and strings accompanied by lead singer Alex Turner’s breathy, warbled voice lazily vocalizing the lyrics to “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball.” It’s a track that gently eases the listener into the album and sets the tone for the next few tracks, which don’t really differ much in terms of instrumentation. The highlight of the song – and the album overall – are the romantic strings that slowly add warmth as the song ends; they left me skipping through the four-minute long track just to catch them again for a few seconds. The album continues with songs like “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am” and “Jet Skis on the Moat” that provide simple instrumentals that only vary with the occasional twangy guitar or synth section. Halfway through the album, I felt as if I was stuck on a long elevator ride as the tracks began blending into one long, jazzy jingle with its unchanging percussion.
The lyrics did not particularly stand out to me and were unintelligible at times with lines like “Lego Napoleon movie, written in noble gas-filled glass tubes” that only the writer would seem to understand. There wasn’t much that the listener could connect to, and it often felt like Turner was narrating a book written in gibberish with his frequent nonsensical word choice.
Another letdown was Turner’s lackluster vocals, which only worked to create slightly annoying background noise in almost every song. In previous projects, Turner’s vocals, which hinge on exaggerated pronunciation and shifts between breathiness and raspy runs, aided instrumentals and strengthened the overall melody of a song. However, on “The Car ” they were reduced to whining bland melodies, leading me to think certain tracks would have benefited without them.
Throughout the album, the strings continuously held the project together and brought some interest to the otherwise barren instrumentals. They made up for the other previously mentioned lackluster elements of the album and largely contributed to my three star rating. Without them, “The Car” could have been swapped out with any other lofi study playlist on YouTube and gone unnoticed.
Although the vocals and lyrics only take away from the dreamy experience that the strings worked so hard to create, “The Car” isn’t a bad album by any means, but it fails to deliver anything novel or interesting enough to be remembered in the long run. The project is enjoyable in a way that is comparable to the familiar background noise of a cafe, pleasantly ambient, but easily filtered out and forgotten.