Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino - Arctic Monkeys | Review

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Five years in the making, Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino, for some may be as confusing as Turner’s newly acquired facial hair, but in other ways it’s the complete package that takes people on a intergalactic music odyssey.

So, if you’re looking for the old Arctic Monkeys, they have well and truly left the building, got in touch with Elon Musk and invested money into the future of Tesla. Hypothetically speaking. The point is, this album comes from a place much different from the glam smoke room rock of AM, and gears you up for a rocket launch to Mars.

Without any context to the Arctic Monkeys and their previous sound, this album could easily pass as one that was released a few decades ago and produced for an 80s theatric-horror film.Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino has a lot of theatric elements, making it an album that would work incredibly well on a ‘Carrie meets Blade Runner’ film. In fact, if this had been written and produced for a sci-fi thriller, this album could easily be seen as ingenious. 

Going into listening this album, we knew that the sound was going to be ‘different’, as Alex Turner had mentioned that to be the case in previous interviews. The album was teased originally as a solo project then later confirmed as an album with a sound that would be dissimilar to AM. So, it seems for now, that the days of punch-in-your-face choruses and heavy guitar infused anthems are out. 

For this album it seems like a lot of the influences are coming from a resurgence of sci-fi themes in the media over the past couple of years, with things like Stranger Things and 70s mellow rock vibes. You'll hear a lot of synthesisers, long drawn out guitar riffs, electric piano, organs and melodic background singing throughout these tracks and it is definitely reminiscent of the 60s, 70s & 90s - a hybrid of decades known for their experimentation with sound. You could even say this sort of experimentation is an ode to David Bowie, or more accurately, Ziggy Stardust, but I feel like that might be reading into things too much. 

In wake of the release, Alex Turner (chief monkey) spoke to Linda Marigliano from Triple J about the album, which gives us a little more context about Tranquility base Hotel + Casino and all its treasure eggs. 

Turner in his interview explained how the sound trajectory was largely due to a change in instrument and thereby a change in character for the whole album. 

“ So, you change that… [The piano] brought out this character. I think the lyrics I came up with were different as a result of the chords me fingers had fallen on.”

Fun fact to note here as well is that Turner only began learning piano so that he could make this record, which is either really ballsy or stupid if your signature sound is heavily guitar. I’ll let you be the judge.

In his own words, Turner describes the album as something that is ‘a battle between the future and the past’, which I think is why this album has a very reminiscent aura to it.

Arctic Monkeys have moved beyond the poetic hard hitting romanticised choruses and verses of AM and want to touch on subjects that require wordier explanations - which is definitely evident on multiple tracks, with the stand out being ‘One Point Perspective’. One thing that was starkly evident was the cohesiveness of this album. Everything gelled together really nicely, with no outliers. Mind you, the whole album is an outlier. 

As Rolling Stones’, Jon Dolan, noted in their review of Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino, sometimes there is price to pay for restless artistic creativity and with a change-up like this, there is much to like but also feel a bit disappointment about.

It will be interesting to see how this is received by long-time fans and whether it will be the Bowie-esque trajectory people adore or whether it will be a horrific train wreck. The jury is still out on this one. 

Personal faves:

• ‘One Point Perspective’ - a song that highlights the issues with our narrow-mindedness and societies creation of filter-bubbles that push one type of idea. This song felt hit the 'let's get real' button real quick.

• ‘The Ultracheese’ - Look, I just really like this one. Nothing fancy to say, it's just a good tune.

• ‘Batphone’ - "Did I ever tell you all about the time I got sucked down the bottom of a hand-held device?" - I mean, what a lyric! 

⭐⭐⭐ 3/5 stars - A record high on moonshine and moondust, but still attention grabbing