If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is: a college course could be dedicated to parsing this dense album. The hotel and casino are struggling to pay the mortgage. In Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, Arctic Monkeys take on the role of a resident band in the titular resort’s cabaret. It’s a rare moment of transparency on the album, a line that tells you what it is and what it means, preceding eleven tracks that consist mostly of dense allegory and allusion.Īrctic Monkeys have released what I like to call their “30s album.” Few bands remain in the zeitgeist long enough to go from gruff twenty-somethings to more polished versions of their adult selves, and it’s always interesting to see how a band’s music matures with its members. “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes,” opens Arctic Monkeys’ newest album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.