Alex Turner notes the cinematic sound of Arctic Monkeys’ ‘The Car’
Arctic Monkeys‘ seventh studio album, The Car, is now just days away from release. The Sheffield band have released two singles from the record so far, ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’ and ‘Body Paint’, and have played several of the album’s tracklists during their recent tour.
The album appears to have something of a cinematic sound to it, particularly on ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’. When asked about this recently, Alex Turner responded, “There’s certainly that sound on the record. I don’t know if that was a decision we made in the initial meeting about the record, but it just seems that naturally, that’s where it went.”
He added, “I think probably having the string section contributes to that. You know, pure drama there, really. It felt like that was appropriate really with these songs. It felt like there was sufficient space to attempt to include some of those instruments that we haven’t done before unless we count ‘Baby, I’m Yours’, of course.”
So too have the music videos had that grainy texture that we associate with classic films of yore. This is unsurprisingly seeing that Turner has revealed himself to be something of a cinephile, previously referring to films such as World On A Wire, Blade Runner and the works of Jean-Pierre Melville (particularly Le Cercle Rouge) in recent years.
Matt Helders noted the additional time that the band had to work on the new record. It’s been four years since the release of their previous effort, Tranquillity Base Hotel and Casino. Helder said, “I think we were probably given more time than we were expecting to have from the start of the process to actually record it. But that wasn’t a bad thing in hindsight. We had more time to refine what we wanted to do. By the time we went to record it, it was all planned by then.”
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