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"I Sell the Fact That I Can't Be Bought."

The Starboy analogy works because, just as AM fed rock through the west coast genres, this album feeds lounge music through it too. One Point Perspective starts with dink-dink-dink keys, whose vibes recall Dr Dre on Still DRE. There are breakbeats here and there, and subtle funk. The new ingredients, though, are soul and 60s film soundtracks. The vintage loveliness of Curtis Mayfield and his ilk hits you from the off on Star Treatment; retro keyboard sounds abound.

The album exists in a narrow bandwidth of sound but that strip reveals depths and textures over time.Buried inside scenarios, allusions and lunar perspectives are disarming moments of what you might laughably call “realness” in the hall of mirrors that is art. “So I tried to write a song to make you blush,” sings Turner, “but I’ve a feeling that the whole thing may well just end up too clever for its own good, the way some science fiction does.” There is a risk that this atmospheric record, one that wrong-foots expectation, might not land well. But this voyage into themed purgatory – what one song calls the Ultracheese – is worth it.

The Return of the Rock Gods

With the genre of rock music at an all-time low ebb, many people have pinned big hopes on this, Arctic Monkeys’ sixth album. The group was arguably the last straight-up rock band to break through in a major way — their 2006 debut broke the record for single-week album sales in their native U.K. — and they’ve maintained their status as one of the world’s biggest bands via songs like 2013’s booming “Do You Wanna Know” (which broke them in the U.S.), 2009’s snaky “Crying Lightning” and the thrashy 2005 track that put them on the map, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor.” Singer/primary songwriter Alex Turner’s gnarled melodies and innovative wordplay add an ever-unfolding element of surprise to the group’s songs, and they remain one of the few arena-level rock bands who aren’t over 40.

A New Era for Arctic Monkeys

Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but the excellent and hotly anticipated “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” is probably not going to meet anyone’s standard for saving rock and roll; in fact it’s the group’s least rock effort to date. Turner has said it’s the first set of songs he’s written on piano instead of his native guitar, and consequently the album has an echo-speckled, orch-pop, Burt Bacharach/Jimmy Webb-type vibe that’s well-suited to a group that’s spent a dozen years exploring the standard two-guitars/bass/drums rock template and, not coincidentally, all passed the age of 30 in the past couple of years. (It also suits the vintage 1960s tape recorder featured on the cover art.)

Fresh Perspectives

While the new approach has taken Turner’s songwriting and singing into fresh areas — like the bonkers chorus on “She Looks Like Fun” and the orchestral flourishes on “The World’s First Ever Monster Truck Front Flip” — the dog-leg melodies and haunting refrains remain, and his lyrics are hilarious as ever: The album’s oft-quoted opening line is “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes, now look at the mess you’ve made me make”; “Golden Trunks” features the immortal line, “The leader of the free world reminds you of a wrestler wearing tight golden trunks”; and in the opening of “One Point Perspective,” Turner takes advantage of his Northern English accent to rhyme “Dancing in my underpants/ I’m gonna run for government” over a piano pattern that is (briefly) almost identical to Sara Bareilles’ “Brave.” The closing “Ultracheese” is a 1950s-style throwback ballad; longtime fans will probably flock to “Four Out of Five,” which has one of the group’s trademark snaky guitar riffs and skulking grooves.

While a change of pace, none of these songs will sound unfamiliar to fans, or really could have been created by anyone else except a very talented parodist. Ultimately, “Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” is just a snappy new outfit for a group that knows experimentation and diversity are keys to longevity.

Arctic Monkeys
“Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”
(Domino Records)