Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is Arctic Monkeys meets Las Vegas lounge in space. If you can approach that with an open mind, you’ll realize how much they’ve made their lofty ambitions work.
Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino opens with the line “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes, now look at the mess you made me make.”
That’s right, the arguably best-known British indie rock band has reached the self-referential part of their career. It’s hard to say Arctic Monkeys have been anything but transparent all these years though, as even their hairstyles have betrayed their musical direction. Starting as four shaggy-haired lads who cranked out garage rock on Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and Favourite Worst Nightmare, they grew longer locks for the more psychedelic Humbug and Suck It And See. Things took a left turn when the band adopted a greaser look for the hard-rocking AM, with frontman Alex Turner sporting the slickest of pompadours. Now, the band presents a more bedraggled yet retro look, one that defies easy guesses as to their latest musical style. Sleazy classic rock? A gradual step into heavy metal?
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is best understood as a concept album about a moon base, one that includes the titular entertainment venue. Arctic Monkeys, or their fictional band counterparts, have a residency at this hotel and casino, where they serenade the patrons with lounge songs. In other words, it’s Arctic Monkeys in Las Vegas in space. Yes, really.
It’s hard to tell what the bigger shock is here: the concept or the lounge music. I can’t answer for the former, but if you’re wondering how the Arctic Monkeys went from making a rockin’ album that included Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme to an easy-listening release that barely skirts rock at all, Alex Turner’s work with side project the Last Shadow Puppets serves as a bit of a missing link. The Last Shadow Puppets’ 2016 album Everything You’ve Come to Expect had a 60s mod culture aesthetic where Turner highlighted his suaver (and occasionally sleazier) side over softer rock melodies. This persona reemerges on Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, which puts Turner’s bandmates in a somewhat peculiar position. Arctic Monkeys have excelled with slower songs in the past (“Only Ones Who Know,” “Secret Door, “Cornerstone”), but never strayed too far from guitar riffs and pounding drum beats. Therefore, you can probably imagine why Turner’s bandmates weren’t on board with his space lounge idea at first, and it was almost an Alex Turner solo release. Be glad they opened to the idea though, as the final result showcases a side of the band no one would have imagined, and they surprisingly make their lofty ambitions work.
The pinnacle of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’s concept lays within lead single “Four Out of Five,” which also serves as the most accessible and conventionally-structured track on the album. Casual listen takeaways include a jarring synthesizer melody that seems lifted from an old horror movie and a chorus about something being gentrified, yet listen closer and realize he’s talking about “cute new places popping up” around the moon crater Clavius. If this futuristic vision weren’t enough, Turner boasts of putting a taqueria named “the Information-Action Ratio” on the roof of the Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, one that has received reviews of “four stars out of five.” It’s a lot to unpack, and serves to demonstrate how Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (the album, not the moon base this time) is best understood when taken as a whole, preferably with repeat listens.
The rich imagery and depth of the album’s lyrics set it apart from the remainder of the Arctic Monkeys’ discography, which is saying something as Turner has never been one to downplay his way with words (well, except on Suck It And See). Just as the band’s debut was a compilation of narratives surrounding a hazy night out, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino goes all in with its theme that combines sci-fi with the disillusioned observations of Turner’s washed-up lounge singer alter-ego. Opening track “Star Treatment” sets the scene perfectly, with lines like “I’m a big name in deep space, ask your mates” and “back down to Earth with a lounge singer shimmer, elevator down to my make believe residency from the honeymoon suite, two shows a day, four nights a week, easy money.”
Although the astronomy theme pops up again on “American Sports” when Turner asks “so when you gaze at planet Earth from outer space, does it wipe that stupid look off of your face?,” most of the science fiction motif is far less literal and concerns a fraught relationship with technology. On “The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip” he remarks on “forward thinking model villages, more brain shrinking moving images,” while “She Looks Like Fun” includes the pointed line “Finally, I can share with you through cloudy skies, every whimsical thought that enters my mind.” Warnings against the overuse of social media and an encroaching Internet are nothing new (both MGMT and Franz Ferdinand included similar sentiments on their latest releases), but Turner’s alter-ego delivers these lines with an observational cynicism in fitting with the character he’s created.
Turner isn’t afraid to point his wit at himself either, dishing out candid, self-deprecating lines throughout the album. “One Point Perspective” ends with “I’ve played to quiet rooms like this before. Bear with me man, I lost my train of thought,” and you can almost imagine a flustered entertainer starting to sweat under the stage lights. Other times, it’s harder to tell where Alex Turner ends and his lounge singer alter-ego begins, with lyrics like “I might look as if I’m deep in thought, but the truth is I’m probably not, if I ever was” on “The Ultracheese” and “I tried to write a song to make you blush, but I’ve a feeling that the whole thing may well just end up too clever for its own good” on “Science Fiction.” Set on Earth or the Moon, Turner’s presence as a narrator who chastises others for their vapid interests before realizing his own haughtiness is the most compelling parts of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.
The central presence of Turner on the album and its devotion to lyrical profundity unfortunately comes at the expense of its instrumentation. To the Arctic Monkeys’ credit, the music does fit the space lounge theme perfectly. “Star Treatment” features gentle piano notes, bassist Nick O’Malley slowly strumming, and drummer Matt Hellers reining himself in to only provide the occasional snare, but the real highlight comes from its backing vocals sung in a soulful falsetto straight out of a Motown song. Similarly retro, “One Point Perspective” and “The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip” are both driven by synthesized eighth notes, while “The Ultracheese” is a livelier piano piece. More intriguing are the “spacier” parts that evoke the retrofuturism of old sci-fi movies, especially the ominous alien-like synthesizers of “American Sports” and the always classic Theremin sounds of “Science Fiction.” There’s even some hints of glam rock on “Golden Trunks” and “Four Out Of Five.”
Yet “Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie meets the Rat Pack” sounds better on paper than it does in execution, as Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is the most subdued the Arctic Monkeys have sounded. Guitarist Jamie Cook shines with brief shredding at the end of “American Sports” and arguably has a prominent role on the title track, but otherwise plays scattered notes on most tracks with nary a power chord in sight. Because Turner wrote most of the songs on piano, keyboard-based instruments lead most of the tracks, with Cook, O’Malley, and Heller serving more of a backing role. This lends itself to less conventionally-structured songs, as only “Four Out Of Five” has something resembling a memorable chorus, and the album as whole is much better for quoting than it is singing along.
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is an album that’s sure to surprise all and disappoint many. It’s easy to find its theme kitschy and distracting, and the band’s strict adherence to it leaves little fodder for any fans who wanted proof this is the same band who released AM. It’s hard to imagine any of these songs being played to a raging crowd at Glastonbury, and the debate as to whether this should have remained an Alex Turner solo project does have some validity. Divisive as it is though, it’s hard to deny that it’s intriguing and original. The band’s steadfast commitment to theme is admirable, and Turner deserves significant praise for not only conceiving the album’s concept, but also seeing it to fruition with his character-based performance. While it may have the weakest instrumental performance by the band so far, it easily contains their best lyrics, and tracks like “Star Treatment” and “Four Out of Five” are strong enough to stand on their own. It’s hard to tell where the Arctic Monkeys are going from here, be it a hip-hop album based in the Wild West or a country album in Medieval times, but Tranquility Lane Hotel & Casino rewards those who approach it with an open mind and recognize how much effort went into a massive risk.
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