Even with solid musicality, concept albums aren’t always solid concepts, nor are they told well. Yet Arctic Monkeys know their stuff.
I may be in the minority, but concept albums tend to lay the pomp and melodrama on thick. The idea of creating a cohesive soundscape that spouts a sprawling story is titillating, but I hardly ever find one that’s executed well enough to draw me in. Rush’s 2112 comes close, but in their effort to tell such a specific, detailed story, the group simply hands too much info, propelling the album into something more of a storybook backed by song. Pink Floyd comes close multiple, multiple times, but falls to the same trap. Even Muse, my adolescent obsession, fails to grab my attention with Drones, which simply drips congealing puddles of camp.
All this to say that I was pleasantly surprised that, despite it not always appealing to my genre tastes, I thoroughly enjoyed the concept behind Arctic Monkeys’ latest Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. It may be wordy and melodically lacking, but Tranquility Base doesn’t want to hold your hand through some grand, head-scratching narrative. It’s content to build an interesting near-future, whisper sweet nothings about technology, and let you exist within its meditated space for a short time.
With the opener, “Star Treatment,” frontman Alex Turner casts himself as the washed-up, philosophical singer for a lounge band in the titular fictional vacation spot; coincidentally, the hotel is on the moon. As Turner hops between locales within the resort, he ruminates through his sullen, drunken skepticism with the hotel guests, who more than likely are too busy sipping martinis to notice or care.
But we care, even if its only to understand where this cosmic metaphor takes us. Early on, Turner muses about the meaning and futility behind “being a star,” whilst looking at Earth from the heavenly void. From here, Turner turns his attention toward politics and technology—ideas which feel strikingly poignant in such a relaxed, futuristic environment, setting aside their trite nature.
However, these takes on virtual reality and President Trump feel less like straightforward jabs and more like thoughtful pokes, prods, nods, and side glances. They never weave some fascinating tale of the treachery behind technology. Instead, they feel like small hints of conversation that lounge-faring hotel guests would pick up from the tables around them. It’s all especially rich coming from a singer who’s notoriously dodgy about his own use of technology and media. He’s quite literally an outsider, both in reality and in album; another star on the moon, gestating the absurdity of the modern norm back on Planet Earth.
Tranquility Base continues to tread this ground through tracks like “Science Fiction,” “Batphone” (which is filled to brim with metaphors of smartphones), and “The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip” (which highlights the absurd, strange headlines and details the mind will single out, memorize, and focus on). Each melody fixates on humanity and its adoration with the new, strange, and advanced.
The personal highlight of the experience, “Four Out of Five,” hones in on the techniques used to control and redirect this adoration to gain influence. The song details a “taqueria on the roof” of the Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino.
(For anyone who doesn’t want to leave and Google “taqueria,” it’s a taco shop.)
“Four Out of Five” points out the insane lengths we as a society now go to just to make ourselves stand out. The album takes place in a hotel on the moon, which is absurd in and of itself. But the album also takes place in a timeline where that idea has become so commonplace that a taco shop on the roof of a hotel on the moon was the only logical step in returning attention to the tourist attraction. It shines an eerie spotlight on advertising tactics, marketing ideas, niche differentiation, and audience appeal in our own reality. In this day and age, it’s no longer good enough to simply do something very well. No, to be recognized in a meaningful capacity, you have to spin your idea in the most ludicrous way possible—you’ve got to be the next taco shop on the moon. Starting out as a freelance writer, it’s a concept that hits home, same as it did in Queens of the Stone Age’s “If I Had a Tail.”
All this to say, delicacy, context, and delivery of subject material matter a great deal when it comes to concept albums. Tranquility Base works much better than 2112 or The Wall because it’s not telling you a story. It’s letting you live one. By simply seating you in the lounge of a lunar getaway, Arctic Monkeys become the characters, setting, narrator, backstory, context, delivery, and motivation in their own world. The album doesn’t worry about clunky narrative, dialogue, or plot points, because there are none. The hotel is a world where you can explore and discover minute, delicate details, whilst imagining the universe beyond. It’s a concept album that is just that—a concept. It’s a whisper in the wind that imparts an impression and atmosphere and leaves you looking at your world the same way Turner and his character do: disconnected in the cold, cynically empty embrace of the galaxy.
Arctic Monkeys bring up a lot of salient points throughout Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, many of which I either missed or chose not to spend my entire evening discussing. Though it’s not always my style, and lacks any real hooks or lasting melodies, Tranquility Base is sticking with me. It’s worth a few listens, even if you simply absorb the atmosphere and talking points from the surrounding patrons and lounge band, before jettisoning yourself back to Earth.
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