"The Car" is the Arctic Monkeys' 7th album

Soul, strings and grandstand balladry, more wee small hours than AM.

The seventh Arctic Monkeys album continues the band's increasingly divergent path initiated by 2018's Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino: brawny riffs in the arenas; something altogether more recherché in the studio. 

Indeed, The Car doesn't even have anything as anthemic as Four Out Of Five among its 10 elegantly wrought tracks, where Alex Turner's pensées mostly come framed by wah wah flecks and string arrangements redolent of Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, plastic soul Bowie and, most strikingly, Scott Walker. Turner's been in this neighbourhood before with The Last Shadow Puppets, but The Car and Perfect Sense inhabit the zone with far more conviction than pastiche. 

And for all the cinematographer tropes, self-reflexive narrative tics and droll references - presumably "Don't let the sun catch you crying" is a Gerry & The Pacemakers nod? - this is a more soulful, less arch record than Tranquility Base. Not quite as detached from Monkeys past as it first appears, either: There'd Better Be A Mirrorball and Body Paint, especially, double down on the grand, elegiac balladry the band have been finessing since 2007’s 505.