Everything You've Come to Expect

Arctic Monkey stretches out in the California sun

Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner has been chronicling late-night disaffection for a decade. But he's come a long way musically from the Monks' early machine-gun guitar charge. The second album he's made with buddy Miles Kane as Last Shadow Puppets is drowsily gorgeous, soft-focus California burnout, á la Beck and art-pop icon Scott Walker. "I guess the coastal air gets a girl to reflect," sings Turner (who recently moved from the U.K. to L.A.) on the title track; string-bathed drifters like "Dracula Teeth" and "The Dream Synopsis" show it can do wonders for a boy too.