Arctic Monkey’s visually immaculate clip for the title track of their 2018 album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, is smooth as all hell and in a different league to anything they’ve done before.
Throughout their career and evolving musical personas, Arctic Monkeys have proven themselves to be no slouches when it comes to making entertaining video clips. From simplistic live takes where the music does the talking like ‘I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor’ and ‘Teddy Picker,’ to engaging narratives of ‘Leave Before The Lights Come On’ and ‘When The Sun Goes Down,’ through to visually enticing displays like ‘Do I Wanna Know’ and ‘Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair,’ they are definitely capable of hooking you right in.
Whilst their latest album, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, may be causing somewhat of a divide between critics and fans, with some praising it as a brilliant work of art and others who ‘don’t get it man’ believing it to be nothing more than Alex Turner at peak self-indulgence, you can’t argue with the quality of the accompanying design and visual themes of the singles so far.
With the first single ‘Four Stars Out Of Five’ borrowing heavily from the work of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, with as many symmetrical shots as a Wes Anderson film, directors Ben Chappell and Aaron Brown captured the essence of the song (regardless of your opinion on it) and developed a narrative that fits impressively well. Almost to the point that it looks like the song could have been written for the video as opposed to the other way around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Es-8FfATo
Which brings us to their latest, title track ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.’ Once again directed by Chappell and Brown, the video predominantly follows Turner as he wanders around deserted halls of the Peppermill Resort in Reno, Nevada, awash with radiating fluorescents lights. Later swapping the resort for the Nevada desert where he turns his attention to some wild horses, in a shot that portrays him as some sort of renaissance man-genius at work.
Tinged with all 70’s trappings in both the costume, props and warmth of the film/grading, the video makes you feel nostalgic for a time that has never really existed in your life, much Like The Strokes clips from Is This It. Its effects are lingering and the handheld zooms in and out, mixed with the incredible lighting work, capture the controlled chaos of this unknown time/place. It’s the best Arctic Monkeys video we’ve ever seen and undoubtedly one of the best videos of 2018.
