THE CAR

THE CAR — Arctic Monkeys
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Every few years Arctic Monkeys make a record that divides their fanbase down the middle, and every time, those records are the most interesting things they’ve done. The Car is the seventh studio album from the Sheffield band and it sounds nothing like Whatever People Say I Am, nothing like AM, and very little like anything else being made in rock music right now. That’s exactly the point.

Alex Turner wrote most of it in Los Angeles and Paris, and it shows — the record carries a cinematic, unhurried quality, heavily orchestrated, drawing from baroque pop, lounge music, jazz, and art rock in a way that feels less like genre-hopping and more like a man following his instincts wherever they lead. There’d Better Be a Mirrorball opens the album and sets the tone immediately — strings, Turner’s voice at its most controlled, a song about heartbreak that somehow sounds like a late-night drive through an empty city. Body Paint, I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am, and the title track fill out an album designed to reward patience rather than demand it.

It debuted at number two in the UK — kept off the top only by Taylor Swift’s Midnights — and became the third best-selling vinyl record in the country that year. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize and the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album. NME and Time Out both named it the best album of 2022.

The people who wanted R U Mine? again were always going to struggle with this. But for anyone willing to sit inside it for forty minutes and let it unfold, The Car is one of the most assured and beautifully crafted rock records of the decade so far.