Arctic Monkeys - "The Car" (2022)

Arctic Monkey's last album, 2018's Tranquillity Base Hotel + Casino, proved to be quite divisive - discarding AM's pop rock riffs and coked up bravado that blew them up into global superstars in favour of a tongue-in-cheek 70's-esque lounge pop sound and Alex Turner rambling about about a hotel on the moon. I, for one, loved it. AM's swaggering cockiness always felt a little one note to me, and the shift to taking themselves a little less seriously (once again) made for a much more interesting listen. It also helps that the songs are actually really well written and there is a fair amount to dig into with the themes and subtext of the record beyond Alex pretending to be some washed up rockstar singing in a lobby of a fictional moon resort. The Car, on the surface, appears to be following in TBH+C's footsteps, forgoing any semblance to indie rock for a 70's inspired baroque pop and soul record. But when digging a little deeper, it feels a lot closer to AM than TBH+C, and not in a good way.

What I mean by that is that it feels much more earnest and self-serious, and somewhat of a pastiche (or even a novelty) of the genres it's mimicking. AM borrowed from 70's hard rock riffs and matched them with Alex's fairly generic 'rockstar' posturing - 'sex, drugs and rock'n'roll' and the like. The Car does the same thing, but replaces these elements with layers of lavish strings and pastiche funk guitar likes, and Alex's formless, lounge-y vocals sprawling over these tracks with little regard for metre or consistency. He did this a bit on TBH+C, but it was much more restrained there, and also fitted with the character he was playing on that album. However, when this album is clearly trying to be taken a lot more earnestly, it just comes of as a kind of bad vocal performance. In places, it feels like he is trying (and failing) to do his best Bowie impression, which made me associate the album with a phrase Bowie said to describe his foray into soul and funk - "plastic soul". Bowie used it as a reference to how he originally wasn't part of the soul scene and he was a plastic imitation of it (I disagree - and I'll get back to the Bowie reviews I promise); but that descriptor seems apt for The Car. While as lavish and ornate as it sounds, it just feels plastic-y and uncanny.

The record opens with by far its best track, the lead single There'd Better Be A Mirrorball. It's the only song I wholeheartedly love on the album and I think best represents what the band is going for on here. It is a heartfelt and sentimental break up ballad set to swooning and cinematic strings and a warbling synth line. The lyrics are some of the sweetest and most grounded Alex has ever written, and the track builds such an atmosphere to accompany them. It certainly feels like it could accompany a movie scene of someone walking back to their car in the rain post-breakup. This atmosphere is unfortunately killed right away by the following track (and first one they teased live) I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am and its tacky 'wah-wah' funk lead guitar part. The song just feels like such a hodgepodge of ideas that never really connect together. The lyrics are disconnected and all over the place, supposedly reflecting a disconnect Alex feels between himself and the environments he finds himself in, but there's too many obtuse references and metaphors masking any sort of depth in the lyrics. I do quite like the string instrumentation that comes in for the chorus, but the cheesy funk guitar comes straight back in for the second verse and takes me straight out of the song. The song feels like a half formed b-side, not one of the big singles from the record.

Sculptures Of Anything Goes has drawn comparisons to AM, which I can certainly see as the mix is mainly comprised of Alex's vocals set against a super-heavy Moog synth bass part - similarly to AM's bass heavy mixes. Once again there are parts of the song I do like; the focus on the synth bass gives the track a lot of tension, and the contrast between it and the strings in the back half of the song is some of the most dynamic use of the orchestra on the album. However, similarly to I Ain't Quite Where I Think I Am, the themes of the song are buried in obtuse references that take away from the emotional resonance; and Alex's performance frankly doesn't do it any favours - he just sounds so underwhelming when set against the drama of music. Jet Skis On A Moat is perhaps my least favourite on the record, with Alex cringily crooning over returning 'wah-wah' guitars. The whole thing feels like the edgeless smooth.fm soul designed to appeal to the type of boomer that can't stand any passion or fire in their music. It really rubs me the wrong way. This leads into the big centrepiece of the record, Body Paint. The track does have its moments, but much like many of the moments on the first half, aimlessly meanders through its disparate sections not really building to a greater whole. It also may be Alex's weakest performance on the record, where the inflections are the most egregious and his voice in general coming across strained and raspy.

The second half of the record is more consistent, sonically and quality wise. The album settles into a more run of the mill vintage baroque pop sound, and Alex's delivery becomes more restrained and professional. However, I will say while there's not much I outright dislike about these songs, they also don't have that much unique going for them to make them stand out. They don't even sound particularly 'Arctic Monkeys' - they're just missing a bit of the snark and tonge-in-cheek fun. There are a couple of songs on the back half that I do enjoy, being the title track and Hello You. The Car is nostalgic look back at childhood memories related to the family vehicle, and features some lush jangly acoustic guitar and melancholic piano. The track feels quite tense, and is so close to being really good - I just wish it had more of a fully formed chorus or climax to pay off that tension. Hello You is apparently the only track that survived the band's first attempt in the studio back in 2019, and certainly feels the closest to TBH+C with it's oddball stream of consciences lyrics and more playful, quirky energy. The song is one of the most dynamic on the record, with a catchy chorus and a somewhat bouncy interplay between the lead guitar and string parts on the song.

It's a shame that following Hello You, the album limps out with two of its least notable and most underwhelming tunes. Mr Schwartz is a fine, bog standard bossa nova cut, and the closer Perfect Sense feels like it's attempting to be some semblance of a big cinematic closer, but then chickens out before it ever gets there, and then the album just kind of ends. My first listen to the record was while doing some jobs and I wasn't looking at the tracklist and I genuinely thought "Oh is it over?.." when the track finished.

The Car isn't an awful album, and it's not like I don't think it's a sound that the band can't do. I loved TBH+C and Alex's two albums with The Last Shadow Puppets that play in a lot of similar soundscapes. It's just I feel that these are easily the weakest crop of songs the band has come out with so far, and some poor aesthetical choices particularly in the first half make it a kind of drab and tiresome listen. As much as I personally have problems with AM, at least that album succeeds in having a load of fun catchy hooks to draw you in, so I can safely say that this is my least favourite record from the band thus far. (I'd still take it over the boring, commercial, 'safe for Radio 2' garbage that a lot of the bands from this generation are making nowadays).

Top Tracks: There'd Better Be A Mirrorball, The Car, Hello You

5/10

Muse - "Will Of The People" (2022)

Muse were one of my favourite artists in my early teenage years, and will forever have a soft spot in my heart, despite how underwhelming and somewhat cringy their 2010's output is. After taking a longer than usual break following 2018's bland and trend chasing Simulation Theory (in which they released a collectors edition of the first two albums complete with rarities from that era and an ambitious full anniversary remaster of Origin Of Symmetry), they had some renewed interest from me as the band were talking about returning to some of their older styles and how this new record would be 'a greatest hits of new songs'. In some ways Will Of The People feels like that, although these songs pale in comparison to the Muse greats they're trying to emulate, and the approach to the writing and stylistic choices paints the band into an awkward corner that no amount of "Muse isn't supposed to be taken seriously" can get them out of.

Simulation Theory saw the band appearing to take themselves less seriously after the pretty self-righteous anti-war Drones, but was paired with incredibly predictable and tired 2010's pop rock and synthwave revival tropes that made the album really forgettable in my opinion. Will Of The People, on the other hand, amps up the pomposity (and honestly tackiness) of the band's glam rock and hard rock leanings, which when matched with their weakest written lyrics to date, make it certainly more entertaining on an ironic level than the bands 2010's output. But when actually switching your brain on and looking at the framing of the lyrics and themes (in the music and the interviews surrounding it), it's pretty obvious the band were aiming this to be one of their most grounded albums. This in itself isn't necessarily a problem but becomes one when looking at the connotations that the writing has, and no amount of irony can deflect from it.

Take the opening cut, the title track, for example. The song is this really gaudy and tacky glam rock rehash with cock-rock guitars and ridiculous choral chanted backing vocals. When I first heard it, I did kind of like it on an ironic level, it was so ridiculous that it was entertaining. But the song is apparently very similar to Marylin Manson's Beautiful People (I say apparently because I have never heard this song as I didn't like MM even before he has been revealed to be an sexual, emotional and physical abuser and I'm certainly not giving him a pittance of my money now to verify it). It's questionable that any artist would want to crib so heavily from someone with so many corroborating allegations against them, but a band with such raw technical talent on a song that is literally about fighting oppression is in such bad taste that no amount of irony can save it.

The following track, Compliance, is the same combination of beige synth pop and generic, 'anti-oppression' lyrics that filled Simulation Theory. After this is Liberation, which is the most blatant Queen rip off the band has ever sounded, and is also about (you guessed it) fighting some non-specific oppressor. The next song, Won't Stand Down, is the lead single and was teased by Matt Bellamy to be a return to the heavy, metal influenced side of the band that they haven't shown since the early 2000s. And it does indeed have a heavy alt-metal riff during the post-chorus, but it also has some of the tackiest lyrics on the album and absolutely horrendous Imagine Dragons style plinky plonky synths and booming, obnoxious synth bass hits during the verses. Kill Or Be Killed is a much better 'heavy' song and generally one of the better tracks on the album, generally sticking to a more standard alt-metal style and featuring lyrics that aren't so obviously crap. However, as much as it compares well to the rest of the album it pales in comparison to the likes of Stockholm Syndrome and Reapers from the band's back catalogue. The track doesn't really have any interesting progression to it, it feels like just five minutes of various disconnected riffs bolted on to each other.

While most of these songs are just kind of tacky and bad, the truly tastelessness of the record rears its head again in Ghosts (How Can I Move On). The song is a somewhat insipid piano ballad about the loss of a partner during the pandemic. It is important to note that this isn't a personal song (as Bellamy did not lose his partner during the pandemic), and it clearly shows. The lyrics are utter trite, and read like a GCSE creative writing piece about grief. It's just filled with banal platitudes like "How can I move on?" etc with no real identity or anything. What really irks me about the song is that 'The Great Reset' is mentioned in the chorus. Bellamy is putting dumb political / conspiracy theorist jargon in a song that is supposed to be so incredibly personal and heartfelt. It shows that the band's supposed attempt to be more grounded in real world topics on the album is nothing more than an aesthetic to lace their usual vague "Us verses Them" lyricism. And when so much trauma has been caused by the topics they reference on the album, it really does leave a bad taste in the mouth. So many people have been in the position that this song is supposed to be reflecting, and I guarantee you not one of them is thinking about 'The Great Reset' when grieving a loved one.

Similarly, Verona is a song about forbidden love, with lyrics quite obviously alluding to viruses and masks and social distancing. Yeah the song reads like an anti-mask song. However its clear that the Bellamy isn't trying to deny the existence of the virus, the song acknowledges "the contagion on our lips". In fact the love interest dies at the end of the song, so Bellamy isn't trying to sell it as some government conspiracy. So maybe it's supposed to be ironic, taking the piss out of anti-maskers? But Bellamy's falsetto crooning set against chiming guitars and slow, arpeggiated synth lines implies the song is supposed to be taken wholly seriously. This once again leads to the only conclusion being that the band are only using this current political discourse as an aesthetic to lace over a SparkNotes retelling of Romeo and Juliette. Which again is pretty tasteless considering the amount of people who have been killed by Covid. The closer, We Are Fucking Fucked, reinforces this idea. The song pointlessly lists of references to global events over the past few years (wildfires, world wars, viruses etc) with absolutely no commentary beyond Bellamy's comical bellowing "We are fucking fucked". It's nihilism with no point, that teenage angst where you think your cleverer than the world around you just because you've noticed how shit everything is and you think nobody has ever realised that before you. Yes Matt, we are 'fucking fucked', and?... The song also rehashes a half formed version of the Knights Of Cydonia riff, to show how bereft of ideas it is both lyrically and musically.

The only song here that is remotely enjoyable is You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween. The track is as gaudy and over the top as the rest of the album, however it's the only one that it's clearly not meant to be taken seriously. The cheesy, funky synth bass and spiralling electric organ are just a lot of fun. It's clearly meant to be a dumb, silly Halloween song and that's what it is. However it feels so odd plonked in the middle of an album that is as equally as ridiculous as it, but completely unintentionally. Here are a load of really bad, tacky, cheesy (and sometimes tasteless) songs that are supposed to be some kind of political commentary, and then a cheesy, novelty Halloween song.

Its hard for me to say which of the past two Muse albums is worse. Simulation Theory was badly written, musically dated on arrival and just plain boring; whereas WOTP is tacky, tasteless and somewhat problematic - although it's certainly going to stick in my memory much longer than ST ever did.

Top Tracks: You Make Me Feel Like It's Halloween

3/10