Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

I kept feeling like this was about to click for me, but unfortunately Alex Turner makes a pretty inferior Bowie no matter how hard he tries.

Used to have this on repeat. I remember reading about how a lot of people didn't like this AM album, but I think it's great. It was just a taste of the direction they were headed. Kind of heartbreaking scifi vocals, fun little space "opera" in a sense.

A band I just have not been able to get into. The lyrics are a little too clever (sometimes at the expense of metrical rationality) and too trending into "the woes of being a great big star" territory. While this neo-lounge music is a departure from what else I've heard it still didn't do a whole lot for me.

I remember being disappointed with this one after a few skims on release, and while I have a deeper appreciation for the artistry on a re-listen, it still just doesn't sit right in the Monkeys' catalog for me. Following the massive success of the swaggering rock revival of 'AM,' this LP takes such a sudden left turn into crooner territory that you'd be forgiven for thinking this is a different Alex Turner project entirely. It's not that it's poorly done – the production is smooth and clean, and the instrumentals are perfectly executed. It's more so the stunning lack of the characteristic swagger, snarl, and cocksure attitude that's ever-present throughout Arctic Monkeys catalog, the band seemingly aged overnight and now singing to fellow geriatrics at the nursing home. Artists are allowed (and encouraged in my book!) to take big leaps and departures from their characteristic sound, but this changeover hits so poorly that it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth today.

I unapologetically adore Arctic Monkeys, and TBH&C has only intensified this affection. Daring to create a concept album that completely transforms their well-known style—especially after having one of the most successful rock LPs in recent times—is a bold move. And for me, it works brilliantly. The ever-evolving Arctic Monkeys are truly one of the greatest bands of our time, and TBH&C is a testament to that. Unheard of.

Yoooooo lets fucking go 5th favorite album of all time 5 Almost can't resist giving it 4 stars out of five, but that's unheard of

When I spent time with this album after it came out i remember liking, not loving it. I can't put a finger on why this is the case, but I loved it on this re-listen. I would have given it 5 stars, but i went with 4 stars out of 5 because I don't know if it could be better than a taqueria on the moon.

I didn't expect to enjoy this so much, but I was almost instantly charmed by the mood of this album. Very different from their earlier output, which I'm somewhat more familiar with. I'd say this is a mature record, and I mean that as a compliment. It's not to say it isn't fun and playful - more that it has a refined production style and compelling arrangements. A pleasant surprise that makes me reconsider this band and their talents.

Channeling Bowie and T Rex really hard. Sounds like a fuzzy outer space lounge act. Just a Iittle too samey by the end to earn a full five from me

Fantastic album!

Well, so far I'm two for two on the user submitted albums. Another good one. I've always liked the Arctic Monkeys, but never delved too far into their catalog beyond their first album, so happy to have the opportunity to listen to this. It's mellow, but really nice and interesting. Strangely evocative of David Bowie at times. Will listen again. 4 stars.

I think the space lounge thing is pretty cool, even if it wears a bit thin by the end of the album. 7/10

My only TBHC regret is that I liked it right away and the project isn't a great grower from there. The album does a lot of character work, though it's hardly a solo effort with the band's characteristic turn at three-quarters. The listed experiences are out there and familiar enough to feel by turns, and this time out there is literal space.

This was better than expected, and Four out of Five is a nice crowd pleaser.

A bit more sophisticated than most Arctic Monkeys I've heard. Star Treatment was surprisingly funky and had some interesting musical changes. I remember hearing Four Out of Five before. Overall it's a pretty good album, but for some reason it doesn't quite jive with me a ton. I think it's the vocal style, it just isn't my thing. Very close to a 4* though.

Not bad. Not great either. Perhaps I'm missing something which would rank this among the more brilliant efforts from Artctic Monkeys, but I basically hear one single song of 40 minutes and 57 seconds.

Yeah, I don't get this addition unfortunately, I think Arctic Monkey's work was best summed up by their debut.

6/10. Was pretty good, but not super memorable. Maybe it's something that would grow on me. I liked "The Worlds First Ever Monster Truck Front-Flip".

I can get behind some Arctic Monkeys

Not a bad record, but AM or Favourite Worst Nightmare should be way ahead, as they are not in the list

I remember hearing this was an insane, left field turn by the Arctic Monkeys, but it really isn't. It's Alex Turner indulging his love of Scott Walker again and it is good enough, but not any more than that.

lol who chooses an Arctic Monkeys album when there’s already one in the official list? It’s ok, I mean they’re not a bad band. But this was your chance to show me something I’d never heard before, and instead you chose one of the most popular rock bands of the last 20 years. And from their “ageing coke fiend” period, by the sounds of things. Minimal guitars, all jazzy arrangements, self-indulgent, arrogant and drawn out. Definitely the worst AM album I know of. Ah well. 2/5.

Rock

I remember listening this album when it came out. I don't really like this 'crooner'-version of Arctic Monkeys. And now, at the re-listen, it didn't change that much.

... or when Arctic Monkeys went from being the best hope for classic rock, surpassing themselves with each album, to become a bland and uninspired group, trying to fulfill Alex Turner's goal of becoming a young crooner...

How the mighty have fallen.

It was just kind of there. I didn't really get into it. The songs could have been edited down.

Really quite dull. Someone said the Alex turner is like David Bowie but not as good, but a lot of this felt like a pulp cosplay but just lacking that pulp magic.

I like the Arctic Monkeys, but not a fan of this album really. More of a cabaret vibe than what I enjoy from them. 2.5/5

Divided opinion at the time. I am with those who didn’t rate it.

This feels completely unnecessary. Arctic Monkeys already have their biggest and best album in the original 1001 rotation, and this album is a sucky candy ass departure from that awesome sound. This suuuucks. Omg, it’s just the same song the whole way through. I will say, very very cool album artwork though. I’m digging it. I just wish I liked any one of these songs.

I don't really like the more conventional Arctic Monkeys stuff, not much anyway. I knew this album was considered something of a departure for them so maybe it would be more up my alley. Nope. I actually hate this. Did Alex Turner stick is face in a pile of blow, hit record and then just start talking about whatever stream of consciousness bullshit popped into his head?

Rating: 9/10 Best songs: Star treatment, American sports, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Four out of five, She looks like fun

Arctic Monkeys had two other albums on the 1001 list, they were good, but this one is exceptional. I liked it much better than the others. I think every song is brilliant. Cheers to the submitter of this one! Standouts: Four out of Five, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, World's First Ever Monster Truck, Front Flip, Star Treatment, She Looks Like Fun, Golden Trunks, The Ultracheese Rating: 4.5

Not bad at all. This album has a lounge feel with some doo-wop through a British alternative framework. The result is an album with a sense of movement and mystery. It’s fitting that I got this album on the 55th anniversary of the moon landing.

Not my favorite AM album, but it is good. I am giving them 4 stars because of them, not because of the album

One of the albums after the Arctic Monkeys slowed the music down and Alex Turner became a smooth operator. I has a chique plastic mood making me almost feel guilty about loving it.

I just wanted to be one of the strokes

This album isn’t like previous arctic monkeys albums which definitely was a shock first time listening to it. It’s a unique lounges rock album but the lyricism is vastly different. I still prefer AM to this album but this is still solid. Its uniqueness makes it its own but this is pretty good. Very fittingly 4 stars out of 5. 8.2/10

I can see why this is added to the list, but personally it would be my 5th maybe even 6th after the Car now, favourite Arctic Monkeys album. But I do agree it’s an important album for them, and should be on the list for that reason alone. I don’t agree with the hate it gets from Arctic monkeys fans complaining they don’t make music like what ever people say I am any more. The same people probably also moan that all Catfish and the Bottlemens albums sound the same.. but also I don’t think this is a masterpiece that die hard fans of the album make out to be. I admire they took and risk and tried something different. Overall I would give this 3 stars, but the temptation to give it four stars out of five was just too much. Id say that’s unheard of, but I won’t be the first or the last to make this joke…..

Put this on for a long walk and so it looped around and I listened to it twice. Then I had to go back and listen to selections from Whatever People Say, That’s What I Am Not because this did not sound anything like I was expecting. Turns out this is a very different sounding iteration of Arctic Monkeys. I loved the strange, spacey, easy sound. It grew on me more and more as I got further along. I can see why someone might suggest this in addition to the album from the original list.

Good lyrics and poetry as usual. Much more subdued musically from the fun guitar pop and rock normally associated with the band.

Never hit the heights of their first album again 2.9

Well-crafted and richly arranged. I would not have guessed Arctic Monkeys had this kind of album in them, so this is a pleasant surprise. The shtick wears a bit thin by the time all is said and done, but I enjoyed it. Fave Songs: Four Out of Five, Star Treatment, One Point Perspective, American Sports, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino

Fair play to Arctic Monkeys for radically changing their sound. With the lounge music stylings and lyrics such as "quantitative easing" it is difficult to avoid an impression that Alex Turner is doing a parody of his own voice. Rating: 3.5 Playlist track: Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino Date listened: 05/10/24

Art rock, psychedelic pop, lounge pop, space pop, glam rock. Ni fu ni fa.

Arctic Monkeys have had a fun career trajectory, huh? From garage rock, to an album clearly indebted to Bowie and lounge music. I find this one more of a curiosity, than anything. I was very into early AM, but fell off shortly after the second record, and it's crazy to come back and find them here. It's good, it's just... Nothing spectacular. It does work as space-age lounge music, floating lazily over the anti-gravity cocktails. Don't forget to tip your waitstaff. Favorite track: "One Point Perspective"

Góð tónlist, textar oft ekki að ná pari.

For coming out in 2018, this sounds quite a bit like a Covid album. Stripped back production with the lead singer just singing about whatever problems they see in the world. Wasn’t a huge fan of this and honestly am just waiting until AM shows up.

Surprisingly boring. It isn't a collection of songs as much as just a arctic monkeys vibe going on for forty minutes. Subdued somewhat non-descript music with a talky singy voiceover. One stops and the next track is pretty much the same thing. The best track, Four out of Five, is amazingly similar... it just seems to add a little more melody/inflection into the title of the song that makes me anticipate and want to single along with that line. Wish there was more here.

I've really wanted to be the guy that likes the Arctic Monkeys. I tried really hard on the album that had "I bet you look good on the dancefloor", a song I like, but I just can't get into them. I think this is our third album of theirs and it hasn't hit yet.

Let's give it to Alex Turner. Starting with this album, he has become a world expert in the difficult and even perilous art of auto-fellatio. Such skills, requiring flexibility and a lot of patience, should be commended, I guess... Not every man (or artist) can give himself a blowjob and then let the whole world see the results. Unfortunately, those praiseworthy skills don't include a knack for memorable hooks or any dynamic flair that could have helped the man structure his compositions away from the self-indulgent drivel often polluting this record. Likewise, the so-called "psychedelic" overtones sprinkled throughout this LP are often quite stale. They evoke a simulacrum that's ironically of the sort the cryptic lyrics in this record seem to parody or criticize. Yet in spite of that (involuntary?) mirror effect, the thing fails to leave you with any deep thoughts about (post)modern online "simulations". What you have instead is just a bad taste in your mouth, lingering after 40 minutes of listening to Turner mostly singing to himself or a nearby love interest, in between two indirect allusions about virtual reality or politics, all of this with his pocket mirror at hand. Reading David Foster Wallace doesn't mean you have the chops to become his pop music equivalent overnight, mind you. Nor that you have the right angle for such endeavor in the first place. I still don't understand why anyone would select this particular record for a list such as this one, to be honest. Those very strange lyrics give a somewhat sophisticated feel to the whole thing for some, maybe... I mean, who picked *Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino* for this app? The list of keepers from Dimery's list in that person's summary are almost all great in my own "book", oddly enough. Good choices here for sure. Yet I couldn't help noticing that those choices are also mostly *old stuff*... Guess that this person doesn't really want to be challenged by new, livelier and intense sounds today. Pretty ironic when you realize that Arctic Monkeys wanted to renew their act with that particular album (helped along by a bunch of very indulgent critics in the music press). Looking into the past is sometimes a solution, sure. But other times, it's an artistic dead end, as barren as the surface of the moon. Now let's face it, vintage or retro textures straddling the pastiche line just for the sake of it do not always make exciting music, whether old or "new". And neither do pointless ramblings about fame or consumerism or the internet automatically make great lyrical contents -- all those frankly sickening, hackneyed metaphors, or those unfunny puns such as "Star Treatment" in the opening track having the same name, they are just... grating. "Bear with me, man, I lost my train of thoughts," goes Turner at the end of the inoffensive second song, "One Point Perspective". You sure did, Alex. You sure did. But you've actually lost us from the get-go. The problem is that you're just using all those dystopian elements and ideas sprinkled throughout the lyrics to mostly speak about yourself and your feelings as a famous British rock star now feeling disconnected from the real world right after settling in LA. Hence why you're losing your "train of thoughts". Yet one can sense that you're still in quite a comfortable position, no matter how disconnected you are. So you can still play it cool, and with similarly cool vintage music in the background. Stanley Kubrick, obviously in Turner's mind as he populates his moon colony with all sorts of different "characters", sometimes applied those sorts of distanciated tricks to describe dystopia, of course. But then, Kubrick would break the big guns, the Strauss or Beethoven brass section blasting their way through the glossy screen to jolt the viewer. But where are the big guns in this record? Nowhere to be heard or seen. Not that *everything* is downright terrible or fully complacent in *Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino*. The music suddenly gets more interesting on third cut "American Sports", for example, thanks to that trippy, psychedelic organ in the background. But this specific cut is no real song, it's basically just a nicely instrumented short interlude with some vocal parts on it. The title track's is also OK, I guess, but "Golden Trunks" is definitely not: I dare anyone in here to convince me it's not a totally pointless dirge on a purely musical standpoint. Single "Four Out Of Five" thus instantly erases any memory of that so-called "song" which preceded it, thanks to its main hook, chorus and well-crafted final build-up. Unfortunately, the supposedly "meta" lyrics in the song -- actually just plain narcissistic -- are a little annoying, and even sometimes as grating as the bridge changing keys just because, well... why not? "I can lift you up another semitone", croons Turner during that bridge. Er... OK. What for, though? Does that make the song per se any better? In all honesty, Geordie Greep is a little more astute at sending those kinds of meta winks to the audience these days. Plus, he's better at layering his own parodic, borderline-cheesy instrumentation into something that truly sounds lively and one-of-a-kind. Cue Arctic Monkey's terrible waltzy, schmaltzy meanderings of "The World's First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip" in comparison, to witness everything that must NOT be attempted in that sort of parodic endeavor. It's just a cut that's totally dull. And once again, it's self-indulgent as f*ck. That's all too bad, because the deep synth tones of "Science Fiction" (probably one of the three cuts you can fully salvage here, along with the title-track and "Four Out Of Five") are great. And at least there's a thematic scope in the lyrics that's useful for once. But then, we grudgingly dive into the heavy-handed main riff of "She Looks Like Fun", alternating with more Serge Gainsbourg-adjacent shenanigans in anything but a graceful fashion. The seams are *so* visible here. And what's aggravating in this particular cut is that its protagonist knows he is just a boring prick, and yet tries to be a smart Alec (Alex?) about it: "Finally, I can share with you through cloudy skies / Every whimsical thought that enters my mind / There's no limit to the length of the dickheads we can be" Yeah sure, this here is also a barely veiled satire about social media, and I guess Alex includes himself in the people he criticizes, which is not a bad move on paper. The thing is, we never EVER get beyond the "dickheads" level. Bukowski is mentioned right after, by the way, and quite logically. One does not dare imagining how tedious and tiring Bukowski would have been in the digital age. So it checks out, I imagine... Then, a little later: "I'm so full of shite / I need to spend less time stood around in bars / Waffling on to strangers all about martial arts / And how much I respect them / Key changes..." Please no. Not *another* meta joke about key changes. Please. And if you don't want to be seen as a narcissistic twat, just stop wallowing in the thing that makes you look like such in the first place. Who cares what you tell those people about yourself in bars??? This constant look in the mirror is simply unbearable, just as Turner's next aimless, meandering vocals and lyrics in penultimate track "Batphone", that I don't even want to delve into. Just shut up, man. Shut up. The drowsy, aptly-named "The Ultracheese" finally concludes the proceedings. Once again, the whole thing is just terrible, devoid of any clear musical direction, just like that weird conclusion ending on a harmonic question mark. The vocals sound forced at times. The meter is often awful and verbose. It's everything good music involving a singer singing lyrics shouldn't be. And I'm not only talking about the last song in this LP here... I'm talking about *all the other duds* in it. Three or four decent cuts... A fistful of other discrete moments extracted from a couple of tracks here and there... *That's* the total sum of the music that's listenable in this thing. Everything else just... sucks. And might also incidentally explain why even among Arctic Monkeys fans, the once-stellar reputation the band originally had live has been sullied in the recent years. Maybe because their new artistic direction is mostly a chatty overrated borefest, and it shows onstage whenever they play new stuff (from this album and the next one). Simply put, the once fun and witty working-class garage kids have now turned to consensual bourgeois musicians, crooning about imaginary resorts for the space elite while expressing some distant irony about the whole situation (that's sadly never mordant or biting). To which you can add ultimately empty self-referential allusions here and there. OK, maybe Arctic Monkeys were never truly 'working class' in the first place. But if that's the case, at least that one simulacrum sounded far better than its latest iteration. To finish, one thing about the album artwork: it is admittedly gorgeous, and evocative of an interesting "concept" on paper. Yet you get it by now, said "concepts" are not necessarily conducive to genuine artistic success. So let this overall failure be a warning for future generations of musicians when the time comes up for them to renew their game. After all, said warning is often included in the album's lyrics anyway - a rare case where the poorly inspired artist is so defensive he automatically gives ammunition to his most fierce detractors: Cue the conclusion of *Science Fiction*: "So I tried to write a song to make you blush / But I've a feeling that the whole thing / May well just end up too clever for its own good / The way some science fiction does". I guess the comparison makes sense. Only in a parallel universe such as one explored in a sci-fi flick can *Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino* be considered as an "essential" album. 1/5 for the purposes of this list of essential albums (not exactly "Four Out Of Five" for this taqueria, huh?) 6/10 for more general purposes (5 + 1) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 0 for now Albums from the users list I *might* include in mine later on: 0 for now Albums from the users list I won't include in mine: 1 (including this one)