Four Out of Five

This is Arctic Monkeys doing something sneaky — dressing up a sardonic, almost deadpan critique of creative-class pretension in the warmest, most seductive production Alex Turner had ever attempted. The track comes bathed in bossa nova-inflected rhythm, plucked strings, and a cool, unhurried tempo that feels more like a seaside resort than a Sheffield practice room. Turner's vocal has fully completed its transatlantic drift by this point — slow, half-spoken, dripping with a kind of ironic lounge-singer affect that makes every line sound like it might be a put-on. The lyrics orbit around the mythology of cultural cool, the places and poses and gestures that signal taste without necessarily meaning anything. It's simultaneously affectionate and withering, a love letter and a shrug. The song belongs to the *Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino* era, Monkeys' most divisive and genuinely peculiar chapter, when they abandoned guitar heroics entirely and went deep into art-rock conceptualism. It rewards patient listeners who like their indictments delivered smoothly, who enjoy being slightly unsure whether they're in on the joke. Best consumed in the early evening with something cold to drink, in a city where people take themselves a bit too seriously — which is every city.