Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Untitled
chronology
AM (2013) Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino ()

Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (stylised as TRANQUILITY BASE HOTEL + CASINO) is the sixth studio album by English indie rock band Arctic Monkeys. It was released on 11 May 2018 through the Domino Recording Company, following up AM (2013). It is produced by frequent Arctic Monkeys collaborator James Ford and band frontman Alex Turner. The album was written by Turner on a piano, and features a lush lounge pop and space pop sound with jazz-influences; a departure from the band's previous guitar-heavy work. Its lyrical content draws heavily from science fiction and film, exploring politics, religion and technology.

Background and recording

Most of the songs featured on Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino were written in 2016 by Alex Turner at his Los Angeles home, on a Steinway Vertegrand piano given to him as a birthday present. Many of the vocal takes on the album remain from Turner's home demos on a Tascam 388 8-track recording machine. Guitarist Jamie Cook commented that he "was blown away by the direction Alex had gone in" when Turner played the band the demos in February 2017. Initially unsure how they would record the songs, Cook suggested Turner release it as a solo album, but Turner was uninterested. Cook began recording guitar ideas to complement the demo, with bassist Nick O'Malley particularly approving of the track "Star Treatment". Throughout recording sessions in Vox Studios in Hollywood and La Frette in Paris, "the piano and guitar started to jell", with O'Malley and drummer Matt Helders joining the sessions. Helders commented that during recording he played with more restraint than on previous records, noting that "it's about playing for the songs".

Music and lyrics

The album is a departure from the band's previous guitar riff-driven work, featuring a "lush and claustrophobic", jazz-influenced sound, resultant of Turner's usage of the piano in its composition. The music has been characterised as lounge pop and space pop, and has been described as "subdued, but warm and classic in the way that musicians who seek out storied mixing consoles aspire to". The album has been compared to the works of Father John Misty, David Bowie, Serge Gainsbourg, Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, as well as Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Turner has cited Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson, Dion's Born to Be with You and François de Roubaix's score for Le Samouraï as key influences.

"Science fiction creates these other worlds within which we can explore our own, and I wanted to write something about that idea. So, through reading sci-fi ... I began to access that sort of vocabulary — then suddenly we're talking about virtual reality moon casino experiences."

—Alex Turner

The track "One Point Perspective" contains "lavish" synths and a "super-simple hip-hop beat", while "The Ultracheese" has been compared to "Que Sera, Sera", with a "gorgeous" guitar solo. "Four Out of Five" has been described as a "Bowie-ish glam song", as well as being likened to the band's Suck It and See, as well as Everything You've Come to Expect by Turner's side-project the Last Shadow Puppets. "Golden Trunks" contains a "raw and brooding" guitar riff that has been compared to the album's predecessor AM, with "Science Fiction" and "Batphone" being compared to Humbug. "She Looks Like Fun" has been described as a "'60s-style novelty track".

Lyrically the album refers frequently to science fiction, exploring "the role of entertainment – the desire to escape into it, and the desire to create it – during periods of societal upheaval and crisis", influenced by current politics in the United States, as well as religion and technology. Turner has labelled the album's narrator as "a lounge-y character", with the "dense" and "self-aware" lyrics described as "endlessly quotable". Turner cited various films as influencing the album's lyrics, including the works of Jean-Pierre Melville, Spirits of the Dead and World on a Wire. "Star Treatment", the album's opening track, begins with a reference to The Strokes' influence on the band's early work.

Promotion

The release of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino was first announced on 5 April 2018, through a short video directed by Ben Chappell. The video showed a spinning model of the album artwork, designed by Turner himself, and included a number of sound samples from the album. The band has stated that no singles will be released before the album. On 2 May 2018, the songs "American Sports", "Four Out Of Five", "One Point Perspective" and "She Looks Like Fun" were performed live in San Diego. The band announced pop-up shops for the weekend of the album's release, in their native Sheffield, New York, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, and Sydney. The Sydney pop-up venue included a mini film festival curated by the band.

Artwork

The album's artwork was designed by Alex Turner using cardboard cut-outs and a Revox A77 tape machine. On the artwork, Turner stated that "In the past I've definitely had record covers that don't, to me, represent what's on the wax, and I certainly don't feel that way about this one. By the end of it, I think I'd forgotten there even was a record. I'd just gotten obsessed with cardboard." Turner began by drawing a hexagon, to reflect the band's sixth studio album, eventually drawing influence from architects Eero Saarinen and John Lautner, becoming "quite consumed" by the process.

Critical reception

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	73/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
The A.V. Club	C
The Daily Telegraph
The Guardian
The Independent
Mojo
NME
Q
Rolling Stone
Slant Magazine
Uncut	7/10

Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino has received generally positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 73, based on 18 reviews. Thomas Smith of NME noted that the album was likely to be "divisive", describing it as "the band’s most intriguing record to date". He promised the album would "reward deep-diving listeners", concluding that "depending on where you’re sitting, this album will likely either be a bitter disappointment or a glorious step forward". Q described it as "a strange, wonderful album, one that almost feels like Arctic Monkeys have embarked on their own full-band side-project". Uncut praised the album as "low-key but engrossing", but noted that "it can be a little one-paced, and a little withholding". Roisin O'Connor of The Independent described the album as "creative, intriguing and completely different". Spin's Larry Fitzmaurice described the album as the group's "strangest and most alluring", writing that a "sense of heading into the unknown – of charting new and strange artistic territory, accessibility be damned – pervades Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino as a whole, its own adventurousness proving a successful gambit".

For The Guardian, Alexis Petridis praised the album's humour, but criticised its occasional smugness, noting that "a smart guy is sometimes all Turner seems to be", with the album's tracks "feel[ing] like less than the sum of their parts". He concluded that "at turns thrilling, smug, clever and oddly cold, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is only a qualified success" and is "evidence – albeit flawed – of a certain musical restlessness". In a mixed review for Rolling Stone, Jon Dolan praised the album's ambition but wrote that "the meandering LP can't bear the weight of the man at the piano's indulgences", concluding that the band "tried a stylistic change up that doesn't quite work" and that "sometimes restless artistry has a price". Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club noted that the album's lack of "obvious hooks" was its key flaw, resulting in it feeling "unmoored and even plodding".

Track listing

All tracks are written by Alex Turner

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Star Treatment"	5:54
2.	"One Point Perspective"	3:28
3.	"American Sports"	2:38
4.	"Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino"	3:31
5.	"Golden Trunks"	2:53
6.	"Four Out of Five"	5:12
7.	"The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip"	3:00
8.	"Science Fiction"	3:05
9.	"She Looks Like Fun"	3:02
10.	"Batphone"	4:31
11.	"The Ultracheese"	3:37
Total length:		40:51

Personnel

Credits adapted from liner notes.

Arctic Monkeys

• Alex Turner – vocals (all tracks), backing vocals (1–10), organ (1–7, 9, 10), piano (1, 2, 4–7, 9, 10), guitar (1, 2, 5–7, 9, 10), bass (4–10), Orchestron (1, 2, 4), synthesiser (7, 10), baritone guitar (1), dolceola (1), harpsichord (4), acoustic guitar (5), drums (10)
• Jamie Cook – guitar (1, 2, 4–9, 11), lap steel (1, 3), acoustic guitar (5), baritone guitar (10)
• Nick O'Malley – bass (1–3, 9, 11), backing vocals (1, 2), guitar (7), baritone guitar (8)
• Matt Helders – drums (1–3, 6, 7, 9, 11), rotary timpani (1), backing vocals (1), synthesisers (8), Farfisa (8)

Technical

• James Ford – production, engineering, mixing
• Alex Turner – production, engineering
• Jimmy Robertson – engineering
• Nico Quéré – engineering
• Anthony Cazade – engineering
• Jonathan Ratovoarisoa – engineering
• Michael Harris – engineering
• Loren Humphrey – engineering

Additional musicians

• James Ford – synthesiser (4–6, 9, 10), drums (1, 4, 7), percussion (1, 5, 6), Orchestron (2, 4, 6), vibraphone (1, 2), pedal steel (1, 11), acoustic guitar (3, 6), piano (8, 11), Farfisa (1), RMI Rocksichord (1), baritone guitar (1), harpsichord (4), synthesiser programming (4), rotary timpani (6), organ (9)
• Tom Rowley – guitar (5, 8), electric guitar (3, 6), acoustic guitar (5, 8), piano (7, 9), fuzz guitar (3), electric guitar solo (6), acoustic and baritone guitar solo (11)
• Zach Dawes – baritone guitar (3), piano (7)
• Tyler Parkford – piano (3), Farfisa (7)
• Evan Weiss – acoustic guitar (3, 7)
• Loren Humphrey – drums (6, 8, 9, 11)
• James Righton – Wurlitzer (6, 8, 11)
• Josephine Stephenson – piano (6, 8, 11)
• Cam Avery – backing vocals (9)

Artwork

• Alex Turner – artwork
• Matthew Cooper – design
• Zackery Michael – photography
• Ben Chappell – band portraits, additional photography