GB eye Arctic Monkeys Boat 61 x 91.5cm Maxi Poster

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It’s very much a farewell to LA, where this Sheffield band have spent much of the past decade. Turner’s assiduous documenting of that town’s night-time economy peaked twice: with 2013’s brilliant AM, whose title simultaneously riffed on the band’s initials, the wee small hours and the AM radio dial, and with the equally excellent – but very different – Tranquility Base. Although set in space, Tranquility Base had “ a taqueria on the roof” and very much reflected 21st-century life on the ground in California. Just as often, The Car finds him dislocated ( I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am), baffled or wistful. “When it’s over, you’re supposed to know,” he reflects on Jet Skis on the Moat, a squelchy soul cut. On Hello You, someone is “dragging out a long goodbye” to string arpeggios. As Turner bid LA adieu, relocating his high-life observations to the French Riviera, there are also many farewells to lovers on The Car, alongside interrogations of old ways of doing things. Peering into the windscreen, you can see a breakup album of sorts. There’d Better Be a Mirrorball finds Turner’s protagonist walking slowly to a waiting car, feeling the weight of his emotional baggage. Body Paint suggests infidelity, with an opening couplet for the ages. “For a master of deception and subterfuge/You’ve made yourself quite the bed to lie in,” Turner sneers in a delicate falsetto. Mostly, though, the cars on this album have a finality to them, taking people away. Far harder to parse than its immediate predecessor, 2018’s Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, The Car is, nonetheless, an achingly bleak album of leave-takings; opaquely beautiful, like a classic car with tinted windows. There are many farewells to lovers on The Car, alongside interrogations of old ways of doing things Most importantly, however, with new live shows comes with the distinct reality of new music. Album six – which was reportedly recorded last year with trusted producer James Ford – is most likely in the bag, meaning we should hear something in the coming months. A new era of Arctic Monkeys is beginning to take shape.