The Car is in every way a sequel to Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, the 2018 album that found Alex Turner pushing Arctic Monkeys in the direction his side project Last Shadow Puppets pursued. Louche and lugubrious, The Car is rife with signifiers of a stylish, seedy past: wah-wah guitars, swelling cinematic strings, tinkling ivories, and analog synths. What's missing is any sense of rock & roll, a swagger that's absent in the backbeat rhythms, slithery guitars, and falsetto croon Turner adopts for the majority of the album. Ever the wordsmith, he packs a lot of lyrics into his winding melodies yet ends up obscuring their intent by singing like a lounge singer whiling away his hours in a second-rate hotel. The effect is intentional and is not without appeal. There's a certain charm in hearing Arctic Monkeys abandon all their previous strengths, defiantly avoiding melody and muscle; few groups of their stature embark on such a radical revision of their aesthetic. The Car doesn't feel like a progression from Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino so much as a holding pattern, though, with any forward motion arriving in arrangements, not compositions or execution, particularly because Turner seems to be angling for atmosphere, not hooks, with his melodies. The free-floating croon helps The Car amiably drift in space, but it also highlights how the record could use a couple of elements to bring it back to earth. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine