The earnest voyaging on The Car is redressed by its lounging charm. It is an album of multitudes and conflict, despite the Bacharach-inspired orchestral delivery. Alex Turner’s vocals are a neat illustration of where this record works, and where it dwindles—they undulate and over pronounce, reaching composed falsettos between some pretty inane pitch fiddling. The writing is at once cerebral and goofy, stubborn in the face of structure or narrative so that the tracks sometimes curl into a vague mist. The band’s ambition and status requires that they equal the inspirations for The Car. They do not. They do, however, have aesthetic fun with some very cool experiments.
20/30
A favourite: ‘Perfect Sense’
‘The Car’ is out now via Domino Recording.
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