Arctic Monkeys never seem content to stay in one place for long. With Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Alex Turner and company trade the sultry swagger of AM for something stranger, spacier, and undeniably their own. The result? An album that’s equal parts lounge-act-on-the-moon and dystopian fever dream.
“When we finished touring AM, there was a moment when we could’ve leaned into that sound again,” Turner admits. “But then we took a break, and, well, this happened instead.”
“This” is a concept album orbiting a fictional lunar hotel-casino, where Turner’s narratives float between the personal and the fictional, often blending the two so seamlessly you’re not sure which is which. “Just because you step outside your own experiences doesn’t mean it’s not in the first person,” he muses, taking a beat before adding, “It’s science fiction, sure, but it’s also a way to explore ideas that hit closer to home.”
You can feel that push and pull in every corner of Tranquility Base. The record’s architecture owes as much to L.A.’s midcentury modernist obsession with the “future” as it does to Turner’s newfound relationship with the piano, gifted to him by his manager. “It led my fingers to places I wouldn’t have gone with a guitar,” Turner explains. “The songs started to form differently.”
For a band so steeped in traditional hooks, Tranquility Base’s freeform compositions are jarring at first. Choruses often give way to instrumental musings or lyrics that veer into Randy Newman-style couplets. “There’s freedom in stepping away from rhyming or typical structures,” Turner says. “It feels instinctive, like finding the right turn in a maze.”
So, how did the rest of the band react when Turner rolled up with demos that sounded like the soundtrack to a lunar speakeasy? “There wasn’t resistance, but I think it helped that I didn’t just play it straight at the piano,” he says. “By the time they heard it, there was already some echo, a bit of atmosphere. They could see the vision.”
Turner credits some of this approach to his work with Alexandra Savior, whose debut album he co-wrote and produced. “That project taught me to see what a song could become before it was fully there,” he says. “I borrowed that process for Tranquility Base. A lot of the vocals on the final record came from those early demos.”
Despite its sprawling, cinematic world, Turner insists Tranquility Base was always meant to be an album—not a screenplay. “It relies on the fact that it’s music,” he says. “Without the melodies, the words wouldn’t have the same weight. There’s a certain feeling that only comes when they’re together.”
That said, Turner is quick to credit his influences. He chuckles when asked about his affection for retro-futurism, admitting a soft spot for “the past’s idea of the future.” He even welcomes movie recommendations, jotting down a note about The American Astronaut—a cult favorite Kyle Meredith insists he’d love.
As for the future? Turner’s not in a rush to define it. “This record wasn’t about chasing stadium-sized hooks,” he says. “It’s about the spaces in between.”
Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is out now via Domino Records.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
And an interview with the guys from 2013:
