It’s a common trope that “Arctic Monkeys don’t make music like they used to” and while the band’s musical style has clearly changed over time, if you look deeply enough at their back catalogue the signs were always there suggesting that the seeds of their musical evolution were sewn right from the start. So, in celebration of Alex Turner turning 40, we take you on a journey back through the years to see how glimpses of that sound were hiding in plain sight from the very beginning.
Whatever People Say I Am That’s What I’m Not
Everyone seems to forget that one of the biggest hits off Whatever People Say I Am was When the Sun Goes Down. It was their second single and was incredibly popular. When the Sun Goes Down, or ‘Scummy’ as it was previously known, was in their catalogue from very early on. Yes it still leans into the particular sound they were going for on that album, but you can absolutely see hints of a softer, mellower sound in this track, particularly in the opening. I think it’s really interesting that this energy always existed in Alex’s song writing style.
Another often overlooked track is Riot Van. On the demo version of this you can almost (almost) hear that crooning voice Alex eventually lands on by The Car era. Again, it’s still very obviously produced within framework of a four-piece indie band, but given that was what they knew and what was available to them at the time it definitely shifts the narrative of Arctic Monkeys always being this high-energy drum-driven rock band.
Side note: The opening line of the first verse of the Riot Van demo is “smoked a bong last night and stole somebody’s telephone” and it always makes me smile how it got toned down for the final cut.
Favourite Worst Nightmare
While possibly not the finest example from Favourite Worst Nightmare, I do want to take a minute to talk about 505. This song has 2 chords – yes two. If that isn’t giving stripped back, less is more vibes I don’t know what is. It’s an iconic Arctic Monkey’s track that really was created from very little (from a musical perspective). It’s also an incredibly self reflective track. You see the shift to Alex looking more inwards rather than outwards, I don’t want to say for the first time, but definitely in a more pointed way. He’s no longer the omnipresent observer we saw on their debut album.
However, I do think a stunning example of what was to come is the Only Ones Who Know. This song is begging for a full strings section and a bit of that moog treatment. The drum-free track is a vast contrast to better known songs off Favourite Worst Nightmare like Brianstorm and Teddy Picker. It’s something I’ve always disliked about this album (that it felt musically directionless) but in hindsight I think it was the first real signs of the push and pull between the indie rock and roll and something else entirely.
Humbug
Humbug was the true birth of experimentation. This is where the shackles of “we have to be a four piece indie band who play guitars and shit” starts to wear off.
Obviously we have to acknowledge break-away-pop-hit Cornerstone at this point. It represents a shift in how Alex was writing songs. Written on a piano, it’s actually a really unusually structured and far more complex song than you initially realise. It has all the elements of a pop track but they’re not quite put together how you’d expect. It was a big step in moving away from their Whatever People Say I Am sound and on to something entirely new.
We have to give Secret Door a nod here too I think. While the whole album moves to this more rich, layered sound, there’s something about the lazier vocal delivery on Secret Door: the lingering on words at the end of lines and the lifting of the vocals on the chorus. It’s another song just begging to be crooned out over a moog and a full strings section, and if you listen really hard, under the drums, you can even hear the makings of There’d Better Be A Mirrorball. I swear.
Suck It and See
I often wonder if Suck It and See was Arctic Monkey’s bravest album. It’s probably their most vulnerable. Lyrically, it’s the closest we get to a love story (like real, genuine, problematic love, not the “my new girlfriend’s hot and I want everyone to know it” energy of AM) and it moves from the more direct storytelling to something more vague, contextualised and poetic.
At this point, I don’t think we’re taking a big leap to get to The Car sonically. If anything it almost feels as if tracks like Brick by Brick or Don’t Sit Down are holding the album back from what it really could have become. It’s a bit like saving face, where you say a little joke on the end of sharing something raw. I guess we could say Brick by Brick is a great example of using minimal words in a track though.
Although if I had to drill down to something which is specifically reminiscent of The Car, it has to be Love is a Laserquest. There’s something about this song that just hits a little differently that the others. The drums have a subtle swing to them, and there’s this split chords pattern that runs above the vocals that sort of dominates the track. I guess it reminds of Hello You in a lot of ways.
Submarine
I’m not sure Submarine needs its own section, but I do think there was something important about Alex Turner making this album without the band (or Miles Kane). I think it’s possibly the most beautiful thing he’s ever made, but more significantly, he was forced to create outside of his sphere of safety, and I think this pushed his risk taking with the band’s sound moving forward. I think he also got more comfortable with creating something from less.
AM
Someone actually said to me “how can you possibly see a link from AM to The Car?” No. 1 Party Anthem.
Also Mad Sounds. But mainly No. 1 Party Anthem.
The similarities between Party Anthem and Jet Skis on the Moat are palpable. They’re both very chord driven, with these repeated little motifs dancing around to build complexity. Thematically, they’re tinged with a hard-to-pin down sadness, Party Anthem should be this celebratory song about getting a girl, but it’s morose and melachony, and Jet Ski’s on the Moat is tinged with regret about endings, but I can never really tell if he’s sad that it’s ending, or sad that he’s sad that it’s ending. I think both tracks represent a conflict between how he’s actually feeling vs how he thinks he’s ‘supposed’ to feel.
Tranquility Base Casino and Hotel
Honestly, my opinion on Tranquility Base is that it is something we had to suffer through to get to The Car. I can’t pretend to like it, I don’t, but I do think it was a cathartic process for Turner after the success of AM. The observer and storyteller of the WPSIA era returned. Not in every song, but he’s there in tracks like Four out of Five and Batphone.
The detail driven narrative that first made him successful gets reimagined, through sixteen layers of subterfuge. But isn’t that how he’s experiencing the world at this stage – from a vantage point far removed from the average person? Also, as he’s grown in the spotlight he’s become more guarded and more conscious about what he shares.
Ultimately, I think it was the experimentation on this album that eventually led to the drawing out of the cinematic sound of The Car. Personally, I don’t think it worked, but I do think it was a necessary progression in the evolution of the band’s sound. Without this, we wouldn’t have that.
The Car
And then we end here. An album that I truly believe will be heralded in years to come as an incredibly underrated capstone to a 20 year career. While I’m not saying it’s THE End, it’s definitely an ending. Whether it’s the ending of the band, the ending of Alex’s career as a musician, or just a semi-colon of his career while they take an extended break, I think it will be reflected on as a fitting goodbye to the fame and fortune he never really signed on for in the first place.
A note on The Last Shadow Puppets:
I know they fit here and I know a lot of the later Arctic Monkeys’ sound was heavily influenced by the two TLSP albums. But I’ve never been able to unpick Miles Kanes’ influence from Al’s on those albums. They’re clearly an incredible collaborative process, far more than any of the later Monkey’s albums were. I can’t slot them in here without, to some degree, disregarding Miles’ considerable input and song-writing talents, and because I couldn’t do that well, and as the piece is about Arctic Monkeys’ sound, I chose to disregard them. Maybe they’ll be their own story at some point in the future.