Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino - Arctic Monkeys

Released May 11, 2018

6.5 / 10

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Favorites

American Sports, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Golden Trucks, Four Out Of Five, The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip

Least favorites

One Point Perspective, Batphone, The Ultracheese

"Tranquility Base" shows Arctic Monkey's willingness to free themselves from the commercial expectations set by "AM" , their phenomenally successful fifth LP: if you're looking for catch hooks, look elsewhere, because no track here is asking for radio plays. The band effectively decided to ignore all signs pointing to a natural direction to follow after their 2013 triumph and made a right-turn into the unknown, throwing away their GPS and betting on Alex Turner's vision to usher them in a new era. Turner ended up writing the soundtrack to a space odyssey, set in the early days of an exodus that led the human race to a moon colony named after Armstrong and Aldrin's 1969 lunar landing site. The commentary feels a bit caricatural at times, coming from a variety of perspectives; its most potent voice sounding like the hazy rambling of a disillusioned man at the Tranquility Base Hotel bar. The satire is inserted in what could be described as a lounge-pop concept record set in the said bar, complete with harpsichord excursions, vintage keyboard exchanges and the omnipresence of space-age synthesizers. Notably, this time around, guitarist Jamie Cook, drummer Matt Helders and bassist Nick O'Malley (three quarters of the Arctic Monkey quartet) all agreed to take a backseat to Turner's decisive lead - in particular, Helders doesn't pummel nearly as much or as mightily as we've become accustomed to. The band's core sounds are sitting this one out: incisive guitar lines and sardonic hooks have been shelved in favor of an almost Bowie-esque take on modern rock. Understand that this is not entirely unexpected: Turner has already proven he need not rely on the heavy musical tapestry the band has woven in the past to fall back on in order to carry compelling messages as he's done with The Last Shadow Puppets. Let's dive in more into the idiosyncrasies of the languorous cosmic "Tranquility Base". The narratives that unfold along the record often relate to what feels like the voice of a disgruntled person at the hotel piano bar. "Tranquility Base"'s predilection for open spaces and its cosmic atmosphere clash with the late night bar scene and its narrow, slippery spaces the band have excelled at depicting for years. Yet a bottle of liquor is still at arm's length, albeit in a very different setting. *Star Treatment* starts the album with one of the most memorable lines in recent memory: "I just wanted to be one of The Strokes / Now look at the mess you made me make"; triggering a string of reminiscence atop retro keyboards, meandering falsetto backing vocals and vintage percussions. Faithful to intro tradition, the track builds up to a denser space than that of where it started - although it does so very progressively, sneaking stronger reverb and populating the arrangement discreetly to achieve a (moderate) organic crescendo. The following *One Point Perspective* takes on reality checks that make sure childhood dreams stay only that, dreams. The man at the bar gathers his thoughts, unsure exactly of what he means to say, repeating "Bear with me, man, I lost my train of thought" twice - an impression further reinforced by the atypical strong structure that doesn't give much to hold on to. The piano staccato is too distracting, as are the accompanying drums - thank god for the bass on this one. *American Sports* deplores writer's blocks and perhaps more generally outside forces that infringe on our ability to be creative. The more direct reference to its theme is the allusion to "Her Name Was Lola", a book that describes a middle-aged writer stuck in a creative impasse ("And I never though, not in a million years / That I'd meet so many Lola's"). The delivery makes for a pretty conversational song that builds on the cosmic ambience with a sinister rotating synth line. Like its predecessors on the record, the track allows Turner's vocals to shine - maybe they could have shared the spotlight a bit more? "Tranquility Base" offers a form of escapism on paper, a lunar colony full of promises that in reality continues traditions of consumerism that made it necessary to have an outside haven in the first place. The title track has quite the premise, a performative introduction the the Hotel & Casino complex that flirts with the idea that technology and society work hand in hand to keep us in a state of drowsy complacency. Turner might be leading the rest of the elements along but this time it almost sounds like he is purposefully restraining himself - as if he was singing alone in his room and was afraid of being overheard by the neighbors. More than any of the previous tracks, *Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino* evokes the 80s sleazy glamour aesthetic best while remaining loyal to the ethereal galactic undertone of the record. The harpsichord is a key player here, driving a tension alongside the synths with the drum and bass that keep the track firmly grounded on lunar soil, preventing the elevation of the composition into higher orbits. The other single to come out of the record - and the first one chronologically - *Four Out Of Five*, reads almost like an advert for the resort. The track cajoles the listener with cheeky remarks ("Since the exodus, it's all getting gentrified", "I can get you on the list for all the clubs"), driving the point further home with the help of the band's backing falsettos. I appreciate the closest thing we get to an overwhelming musical presence on the whole record that comes with the end of the track, congruent with the overdrawn repetition of the endorsement message. The resulting effect is well-executed: I get the feeling that the ad gets side-tracked and stuck on a loop, mimicking the idea that it's easy to lose control of a message once it's broadcasted to wider audiences, as distant as it might initially feel to you. The reasons behind the exodus are not hard to speculate about, yet one sticks out more than the others (assuming they can be separated and are not all symptoms of one larger dysfunction - which is also a totally possible interpretation): the pervasiveness of technology and the perverse effects of universal access to all kinds of information. I'll kick off this discussion with the following disclaimer: the aforementioned idea brought to our attention plenty of times throughout the record isn't revolutionary or particularly salient - and even Turner and the band seem to acknowledge this without pretense. Much of what is said on "Tranquility Base" belongs to the realm of description, and as such, it doesn't offer solutions to the predicament. Turner acts more like a witness, observing the world with bewilderment, incomprehension and glints of anguish. *The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip* addresses people's infatuation with their devices despite the realization that they make it harder for us to think for ourselves. Even its title references the kind of headline you would only ever stumble upon after hours of scrolling. Musically, the track is almost an anomaly on the record, committing to a semi-staccato pattern with a very perceptible baroque influence. Like many of its peers on the album, the song also features some pretty quotable lyrics, the like of "You push the button and we'll do the rest / The exotic sound of data storage / Nothing like it, first thing in the morning". *She Looks Like Fun* narrows the scope to the realm of social media, where anyone can spew out anything and everything for the world to see. The track grates the surface of the idea that we're all essentially participating actively in the creation of a society framed by the strictest notions of hyper surveillance - a dystopian nightmare long imagined. Note that Turner includes himself in the perpetrators of this predicament ("There's no limit to the length of the dickheads WE can be"). All in all, for all its grand concept, the album is not a very memorable one - perhaps voluntarily so. The first listen can be disconcerting, making it hard to tell if it's a step for- or backward for the band. A couple of listens in, you have to accept it's most likely neither: "Tranquility Base" is the result of a couple of steps sideways. Arctic Monkeys are making it harder to love them with this record. They're not trying to get you hooked on the first listen. Instead, they're counting on you coming back because the first time wasn't so bad, the second time it got better, the third initiated a habit of sorts, and the ones after that came naturally at little to no cost.

Favorite lyrics

"I just wanted to be one of The Strokes Now look at the mess you made me make"

Start Treatment

"There are things that I just cannot explain to you And those that I hope I don't ever have to"

The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip

"So I tried to write a song to make you blush But I've a felling that the whole thing May well just end up too clever for its own good The way some science fiction does"

Science Fiction

#arcticmonkeys #alexturner #pop #glamrock #lunar #album #review