Arctic Monkeys performed in Dublin on October 15 accompanied by a string section for the first time during their The Car Tour, which reached its closing run on Sunday. The band will play the final nights of the tour in Belfast and Dublin on October 16, 17, and 19, concluding a whirlwind trip that began in Australia in January and traveled to Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and all over the U.K. and U.S., just to name a few stops.
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The string section was a new addition to the 21-song show, which included a selection from the new album The Car, which dropped last October. The strings came into play during “Sculptures of Anything Goes,” “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball,” “Body Paint,” and “Hello You,” which was only recently added to the set list.
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In addition to tracks from The Car, strings were also added to the performances of “505” and “Do I Wanna Know?” The full set list included early classics like “Teddy Picker,” “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair,” and “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor,” as well as more recent tracks like “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” from 2018.
The Car is Arctic Monkeys’ seventh studio album, and builds upon the alt-rock, lounge-pop sound from their previous album Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino. Critics praised The Car for its production and the band’s stylistic progression, as well as frontman Alex Turner’s lyrics, though there was some concern that the continued shift away from Arctic Monkeys’ original indie rock style would alienate early fans.
Judging by the mostly sold out tour, that doesn’t seem to have happened, though Turner did state in Mojo Magazine that he was looking for “a song that could close the show” with a more “guitar-heavy” sound on The Car, subtly shifting the band’s style once again. According to an interview from The Guardian, Turner initially scrapped most of his attempts at the album, but finally found his groove while crafting the instrumentals for “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball.”
The Car has been compared to many different artists stylistically, with a few being David Bowie, Burt Bacharach, and Portishead, as well as James Bond soundtracks. While The Car is not a concept album like Tranquility Base, it does feature many references to showbusiness, fame, and audience expectations, with Rolling Stone Germany describing Turner as “assuming the meta-role of an artistically struggling movie director.”
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