Recent Album Reviews: Arctic Monkeys “The Car” and Taylor Swift’s Midnight Memories

By Cormac McCarthy

Every band that manages to get a taste of the mainstream will always be compared to that period of infallibility. Indeed, 2013 saw the release of Arctic Monkeys’ commercial peak with AM, from which they have never quite come close to again. 

However, that is clearly irrelevant to Arctic Monkeys. While throngs of fans may decry the substitution of their many smash hits for their newer songs, the band doesn’t seem to care about it one bit. After all, Alex Turner, now in his late thirties, can’t still be expected to continue to sing about club nightlife, adolescent naivety or youth culture in general. 

Speaking on Zane Lowe’s podcast, Turner spoke about his futile efforts to compose music in the same style and how he gave in to his natural instincts. 

What occurs is an album that manages to stay within a set theme while still having the freedom to contort into what it needs to be at times. There is a deep sense of longing and sadness in some areas combined with sarcastic attacks on the music industry. The band had experimented with this more playful and less serious attitude with the previous album, subverting the hard rock genre with a heavier use of orchestral pieces. 

The fickle nature of show business appears in “Body Paint”, where Turner describes the relentlessness of having to adopt a stage persona. It’s a bittersweet tune in that Turner is aware of its necessity to continue in that world, but can’t escape it when he is away from it all. A more scathing take on the industry is heard in “Mr. Schwartz”, a character that is so blatantly a caricature of all the seedy businessmen that are waiting to exploit the next big thing. This narrative played over an acoustic Bossa nova track gives it a soothing element, almost lulling you into a false security. 

On the other hand, songs such as baroque-pop inspired “There’d better be a Mirrorball” and the soft R&B of  “Big Ideas” give a sense of yearning for something that is never quite clear. Possibly the next stage of the adult mind, when reaching their forties, they begin to question themselves and sink into comfort, wherever they find it. 

Nevertheless, the Arctic Monkeys are a band that have never been comfortable settling into a set sound. This album, albeit a more-laid back effort, is a clear sign of their ability to innovate and the sense of clarity they have of themselves to experiment and constantly move forward. 

Taylor Swift Memories. 

Another artist that has had her fair share of stylistic change throughout her career, Taylor Swift brings a far more subdued sound than normal in her latest album “Midnights”. This sound is predominantly down to the influence of producer Jack Antonoff, one of the most in demand producers in the music industry.

The sound of the album is a perfect combination of the two forces. Swift brings her trademark vocal hooks, power ballad crescendos into the belting choruses and her playful lyrics always alluding to past lovers and friends. Antonoff, a producer who never found a synthesizer he couldn’t wash out, manages to add his own flavour to the mix previously heard on album’s such as Lorde’s Solar Power and Clairo’s Sling. 

Described by the artist as her “first directly autobiographical album in a long time”, the album’s 13 tracks chronicle a baker’s dozen worth of her worst nights that she has had in her life. 

And just like a baker’s dozen, it can come out a bit overbaked. 

Now, before the Swifties come for my head, while the album is certainly very good, it never truly reaches a level of brilliance that we know is capable of the artist. However, it is the lyrical composition where the album is able to distinguish itself. Swift, no stranger to opening up about her own personal issues, leaves the listener into her world for a moment. 

She holds no punches back in “Karma”, a biting narrative directed at her former producer, Scooter Braun. Other, more intimate, songs include “Sweet Nothing”, a tear-inducing ditty about her current partner, and “Maroon”, a poem about a doomed romance. “Anti-Hero” is a brutally honest assessment of her own love life, declaring that she may indeed be the problem. 

All in all, it is a more than acceptable work from the artist that never quite reaches its true potential.