At their best, they’re fantastic – American Sports and Four Out of Five sound lavish and fresh, their tunes and chord sequences twisting and turning unexpectedly. Their combined influence is heard not just in the sound, but in the songs, which are melodically far richer and less concerned with verses and choruses than anything Arctic Monkeys have previously produced. Low-slung and agile, virtually every rhythm track and bassline here could have stepped straight off Gainsbourg’s 1970 masterpiece, while Pet Sounds is paid homage everywhere from the vocal harmonies to the forensic recreation of its sound on The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip. Instead, Tranquility Base displays the same endearingly puppyish, have-you-heard-this? enthusiasm for Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds as the first album by Turner’s side project Last Shadow Puppets did for late 60s Scott Walker.

‘The songs can feel like less than the sum of their parts’.

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