
o dar va merita
Mondo Sonoro - tradus din spaniola:
Mondo Sonoro’s Interview Translated
It is one of the greatest and probably most awaited comebacks of this season. After five years away from the spotlight, Arctic Monkeys are making their reappearance with Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino (Domino/Music As Usual, 18). With a double somersault (IT DOES A DOZEN SOMERSAULTS AND LEAVES YOU SUPERCHARGED) into the void, following the evolution they began with their last album, AM, Alex Turner’s band forgets about guitars to become modern crooners and explore the territory of soul and R&B.
“We didn’t want to create any expectations on the new album while being all secretive about it,” asserts Alex. “We live in a society in which everyone is online all the time, sharing what they are doing or where they are constantly. We don’t. It’s funny because when you decide not to openly share your day-to-day with the rest of the world, it looks as if you’ve become a radical. But no, we haven’t kept anything as a secret, we’re simply not paying attention to tweets. On the contrary, all this time, whenever a fan approached me, I didn’t mind taking a picture together and to tell them what we were up to. I did notice, and I don’t know why, that the expectation for this album is greater this time than ever before. Maybe it’s because it’s been five years since our last album.” The wait is over. After a “lustrum” without any news about Arctic Monkeys, the Englishmen are about to break their silence with their new album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. “Actually I don’t feel it’s been that long,” admits the frontman from Sheffield’s band. “At least, we haven’t stopped moving. After the release of AM, I worked with a friend of mine, Alexandra Savior. We recorded Risk, which was in the second season of True Detective’s soundtrack. That was in 2015. Two years later, I coproduced, played several instruments on and helped her to compose her debut album, Belladonna of Sadness (2017). In between, I got back with Miles Kane and we recorded the second album for our project The Last Shadow Puppets, Everything You’ve Come to Expect (16), and then we went touring the album.” It was then, when the Puppets’ tour was over, that Alex Turner reunited Arctic Monkeys again. “From the outside, it may look as if I’ve spent these five years laying on the beach, but I actually feel as if I hadn’t stopped for a second.”
Locked up at home
Today is Wednesday, 7th March. You will not be reading this interview until two months later, when Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino will be released. In a quick trip to London, Alex Turner is waiting for me at the Town Hall Hotel, in Bethnal Green, to chat for an hour about their new work. His image is… Curious, different: an unshaved beard and long hair up in a ponytail. He speaks very slowly, carefully thinking before answering, but without leaving anything unanswered. He’s charming and extremely kind. “As soon as I was done with The Last Shadow Puppets, I immersed myself into the new album. I locked up at home and I started to compose and to record the first demos. It is true though that this time the process took longer than with our previous albums because I’ve spent more time working by myself, with the piano and a recorder.” Alex Turner remembers that the rest of the band would come over his place only once in a while to see what he was doing. And once they believed to have everything ready, they set off to a studio in Los Angeles. “But when we got back, I began to write more songs. That’s when we went to a studio in Paris where we spent five weeks. Then we went back to England and we recorded even more stuff in a studio from London. I could have kept on recording and recording, but the right moment to stop working on the album was precisely when we decided we were done. I’ve probably become more perfectionist over the years. In fact, this is the first album I’ve done since surpassing the age of 30.” The album was completely finished by the end of last November and, ever since then, Alex has finally been doing barely nothing or even nothing at all. Now, he says, he finds himself in a transition point, from having spent months composing and recording to being the centre of attention again. “But not only am I ready for it, but I can’t wait to be up on stage with the rest of Arctic Monkeys and play our new songs. Although, if I’m completely honest, there’s a part of me that also wishes that all of this, promotion, tour, etc., is over and I can go back to sit in front of the piano to write more songs.”
His silence
For Alex Turner, there are a lot of songs about love in pop music: “he loves you and she loves you” and stuff like that. One of his challenges as a songwriter is to try to go a step further or to loop the loop. “It’s almost as important what you say as how you say it. I try to find inspiration in all of my surroundings, in the world, through the news… Cinema and literature also inspire me a lot. When the tour with the Puppets was over, I read “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace. That novel really impressed me and it’s been a major influence on this album. Jean-Pierre Melville’s cinema also inspired me. He has this film, Le Samouraï, from 1967, which soundtrack has been key to the making of Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.”
The first song that Alex wrote for the new album was Star Treatment, which is in fact the opening track of the album. “In a way, it set the sound for the rest of the songs. It was like an open door that allowed us to immerse ourselves into this new sound.” Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino sounds like soul and jazz, possibly because of the piano’s preponderance. The monkeys’ leader agrees, “There are certain moments in the album, especially in tracks such as the album’s second song, One Point Perspective, that remind me of the type of songs my father would play in the piano. They go together well with the lyrics I was writing, there are chords from jazz, soul and I would also say that the album emits a certain science fiction’s essence. Although deep inside it’s still rock’n’roll.“ Their new reference is that of a modern crooner, something like an approach to the sounds of Nick Cave but through a less darker lens. “Nick Cave is always an inspiration. I’ve always been a fan of his. I admire him a lot,” reveals Turner. “Another artist I respect and that I would like to be like is Leonard Cohen. His last albums are crazy. I wish one day I can get to write a song like Almost Like The Blues. Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Nina Simone, Dion’s album “Born To Be With You” produced by Phil Spector are the influences behind Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino… And also, maybe because we were recording in Paris, I’ve listened to a lot of French songwriters. Chanson’s icons like Serge Gainsbourg or Nino Ferrer. And Italian singers like Celentano or Mina. And Moonlight Mile by The Rolling Stones. During the recording of the album we listened to that song on repeat.”
Even though their new tracks will surprise you and won’t leave you indifferente (some of you will love them, whereas some others will loathe them), if you listen to their whole discography, from Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not (2006) to Tranquilit Base Hotel & Casino, from beginning to end, you can perceive the evolution, and the leap doesn’t seem too extravagant. In fact, you could insight details of what Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino ended up being, in the album AM. “It is a big leap, but it doesn’t provoke me vertigo. I did fear the response from the fans on AM, because I considered it was a great evolution in comparison to our previous records. But this time I don’t feel as nervous as I did then. I think it was the record I wanted to make and to which I’ve given everything. Although I must admit that at some points, especially during the mixing, we would give looks to James Ford, our producer, as if we were saying that we had gone too far. One day, his wife Celine, perceived one of those looks and told us that we shouldn’t be afraid, because deep down we still sounded as before. The appearance has changed, but we’re still Arctic Monkeys”. Although it may be in appearance only, the change in Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is significant, but this evolution is what keeps Turner alive creatively. “I’ve always wanted to go one step further from what people expect from me, but this time it came on its own, in an unconscious or natural way”. He, the singer, guitarist, soul and motor of Arctic Monkeys, defends the fact that the plan was never to make a premeditated record like that, it just emerged. “I did approach the creative process in a different way in comparison to our previous work, with the piano as a main instrument, and that has taken me to different sonorous stops. I’ve also worked more on my own in the studio with those old instruments I’ve bought along these years. Yes, the process has been very different, and that has allowed me to reach the places I wanted to reach and those that I had never been to before”.
Some day
What hasn’t changed in Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino is their producer, James Ford. Once again, Arctic Monkeys have trusted in the member of Simian Mobile Disco to trace the sonorous map of their newest work. “Yes, him again. We went through three studios, one in Los Angeles, another one in Paris and finally in London, but the producer is still our right-hand man since the beginning. He’s another member of the band. I have absolute faith on what he proposes and does. I don’t think anyone else understands my impulses and the creative directions I’d like to take the way he does. Not only that, but he’s an amazing artist, he’s great on the drums”. Josh Homme, frontman of the Queens Of The Stone Age and mentor of the Monkeys, did not participate this time. “We may call him for our next record.” Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino does count with collaborations with other musician friends, like Turner’s partners on The Last Shadow Puppets. “They have participated with vocals or details here and there, members from Tame Impala, Mini Mansions and Klaxons.” Alex Turner hurries the cappuccino asked before the interview started, which must be cold by now, the same moment in which a woman warns me and tells me there’s time left for one more question. Since he’s the one who took care of the album’s artwork, I can only think of asking him if he sees himself experiencing art apart from the music industry. “Some day I would like to… Write something that might not be destined to be used in a song, but right now I don’t have enough confidence. My lyrics are protected by melodies, but I don’t know if I have the quality as a writer to present them naked. I’d like to have the courage to do that. Some day”. — O.R
by the way, au inceput concertele, deja a fost primul, dar nu ma voi uita la nicio inregistrare pana nu am albumul