Alex Turner has spoken out about how he had “no choice” in writing Arctic Monkeys‘ new album ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino‘ as a very distant evolution from successful predecessor ‘AM’.
Speaking to NME as part of this week’s Big Read, Turner said the life he’s led in the five years along with his work with Alexandra Savior and The Last Shadow Puppets made him uncomfortable with repeating himself – and compelled to try something new as the artist he is today.
“This is choppy waters in terms of pretentiousness, but I don’t know how much of a choice in that I had,” Turner told NME of the writing of their new album. “This seems like a declaration about retaining my integrity, which I don’t mean for it to be, but this was all I had. I don’t know what else I could have done, truly.”
He continued: “I don’t think I would finish the first draft of a song if I was trying to make the ‘AM’ record again. That, coupled with the fact that it’s five years ago and in-between it I did the record with Alexandra and the Puppets thing. When you bring that into it the shift between ‘AM’ and this doesn’t seems as great, suddenly. I think going through that I was even further away from the idea that we would be able to replicate it and do like a ‘Mark 2’ of ‘AM’. The chance to do that was long gone.”
Turner added: “It would have had to happen in 2013 or whenever it was. Even then it couldn’t have happened, because I probably felt like this then. Like I’d used everything we had for that.
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“Whatever you started that off with didn’t require for that to be as long as it was, but I’m only human.”
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Arctic Monkeys return to tour the UK and Ireland later this year. For tickets and more information, visit here.
‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ is out on Friday May 11.