Arctic Monkeys: Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino [DOMINO]

Why you'll love it

Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino traded guitars for a vintage piano and a space-age lounge, and it went straight to No. 1 in the UK and made the Mercury Prize shortlist. A bold, brilliant curveball.

This edition

• Domino pressing
• Produced by James Ford and Alex Turner

About the album

After the huge success of AM, Alex Turner wrote the next Arctic Monkeys album on a Steinway Vertegrand piano at home in Los Angeles, and it took the band somewhere nobody expected: a retro-futurist lounge on the moon (Tranquility Base is the Apollo 11 landing site), full of crooning, cinematic strings and Turner's wry, dense lyrics.

"Star Treatment" sets the scene with a lounge singer reminiscing, "Four Out of Five" is a sly, grooving single about a taqueria on the moon, "One Point Perspective" and the title track glide along, and "The Ultracheese" closes things with a tender ballad. Turner even built the cardboard model hotel on the cover himself. It divided some fans at first, but it's aged wonderfully.

Also at Kops: more Arctic Monkeys on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Domino, first out in 2018.