“And I don’t remember doing that quite so … deliberately before,” he concludes. He looks like a magician alarmed the rabbit is missing from his hat. He inspects this thought, then flings out his arms and freezes. “With the Sculptures song” - the dizzyingly gorgeous Sculptures of Anything Goes - “the ‘rock band’ fader comes up for two bars here and there, and then it’s switched back off.”

“Rather than strings on top of rock,” he says finally, “I was interested in switching the ‘rock band’ bit on and off.” He tweaks levels on a mixing desk in his mind’s eye. He tries to describe orchestrating that new album, The Car. Turner has been portrayed as aloof and evasive, but he is a man of pensive silences - an ambivalent overthinker trapped in an eccentric entertainer’s body. His turquoise jumper’s V-neck reveals a thin gold necklace, which he fondles while digressing into monologues on the genius of composer David Axelrod. Now we’ve got it.”ĭuring our two-hour conversation, the affable introvert is determinedly, delightfully animated: he bashes imaginary woodblocks, sprawls across his moulded seat, clasps thin air and shakes it like a Magic 8 Ball. She returns a minute later, and Turner, having strung together no more than half a sentence, eagerly tops up his mug. Would Turner like some milk for his coffee? “I’ll have a bit of milk, yes please,” he says.

In a booth of a downtown Manhattan diner, the Arctic Monkeys frontman is hunched forward, grasping for words to describe their new album - a black-tie orgy of cinematic soul, lurid funk and perfumed 60s strings. Not for the first time, Alex Turner has lost his train of thought.

Paint it black lyrics andy black