ARCTIC MONKEY

THE car is one of the most potent symbols in rock’n’roll. Typically it stands for freedom, escape, personal agency and a mysterious, no-strings sexuality. But where rock’n’roll symbolism is concerned, Arctic Monkeys like to have their cake and eat it: whatever you think it is, that’s what it’s not. In lead single and album opener “There’d Better Be A Mirrorball”, the car is not the beginning of a new adventure but the end of one, the place to walk someone when giving them the ultimate brush-off: “‘Baby, it’s been nice’”.

This is a different Alex Turner to the one we’re used to hearing. Wrong-footed for once, he’s desperately trying to “throw the rose-tint” on a failing relationship, pleading poignantly for the slow-dance scene we all know he’s not going to get. However, “…Mirrorball”’s exquisitely fizzling romance is atypical of the album as a whole. Turner is soon back in his favoured role as cynical chronicler of a decadent milieu. As he once scrutinised Sheffield taxi queues, now he stalks cover shoots and riviera resorts, the Bryan Ferry de nos jours. And while there was a knockabout humour to the sci-fi Vegas fantasia of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, The Car on the whole feels pretty bleak. If golden boy was in bad shape then, he’s in real trouble now.

There’s a brilliant Ian Penman essay entitled “A Dandy In Aspic”, psycho-analysing Scott Walker’s early ’70s as he sinks into a comfortably numb “MOR limbo” of brown-carpeted studios and European TV spots. This is very much the mental terrain of . “”, Turner declares unsteadily on the clipped orchestral funk of “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am”,” and “”. On “Sculptures Of Anything Goes”, he’s a zombie pop star going through the motions, “” while yearning pathetically for a simple love his chosen lifestyle has rendered impossible. And on “Big Ideas” he’s a burnt-out bandleader, singing “”. He’s “”, he coulda been a contender. But these days, “”.