British indie rock legends Arctic Monkeys have just announced online that they will be dropping their long-awaited new album soon.
Titled ‘The Car’, the album will be the band’s seventh studio album, following on from 2018’s ‘Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino.’ Fans won’t have long to wait to hear it in full, as the project is slated for an October 21 release.
A new album from the ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ crew has long been rumoured, with drummer Matt Helders revealing in a 2021 interview that work on the new project was “pretty much” finished and that we should expect new material ahead of their 2022 tour.
That new material never arrived, however, as the band began their international tour in Turkey at the start of this month. Fans have since been kept in the relative dark about when exactly the latest project would materialise, although many suspected it would be announced imminently.
According to press material, the record was produced by James Ford and recorded at Butley Priory in Suffolk, UK, La Frette in Paris, and RAK Studios in London.
‘The Car’ “finds Arctic Monkeys running wild in a new and sumptuous musical landscape and contains some of the richest and most rewarding vocal performances of Alex Turner‘s career”.
On the band’s social media pages as well as their Spotify account, profile pictures have been updated to bring fans the new look of this ever-changing band. The album artwork, shot by Helders, shows a vintage white car sitting alone in a rooftop carpark with a view of surrounding apartments, perhaps suggesting a more retro, lo-fi sound. It’s hard to tell with this lot.
According to their newly-updated website, the tracklist of the 10-track LP, which is currently available to pre-order on CD, vinyl, and cassette, is as follows:
Side A
- There’d Better Be A Mirrorball
- I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am
- Sculptures Of Anything Goes
- Jet Skis On The Moat
- Body Paint
Side B
- The Car
- Big Ideas
- Hello You
- Mr Schwartz
- Perfect Sense
Arctic Monkeys are currently touring in Europe, with plans to reach our sunny shores in December. They’re slated to play, Falls, Lost Paradise, and Heaps Good festivals, as well as a series of their own headline shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth.
At a recent gig in Switzerland, the band gave us a sneak peek of what to expect from the new material, playing the second track of the new record. A snippet was captured by a fan below:
Arctic Monkeys debuts a BRAND NEW song “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am” during show #10, tonight in Zürich, Switzerland! (23/08) pic.twitter.com/z2IVZH8dY8
— Arctic Monkeys Tour (@monkeystour) August 23, 2022
With a constantly evolving sound, the four-piece from Sheffield, UK, have long been guitar-shredding mainstays of British Indie, which swept the world from roughly the mid-00s to the mid-10s. Arctic Monkeys are, arguably, the biggest and most long-lasting group to have emerged from that scene and still draw huge crowds across the world today.
Partially this is due to their high energy, highly addictive melodies, but much credit is often given to the vocals and intricate lyrical work of frontman Turner.
Debuting with the platinum-selling ‘Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not’ in 2006, the band has long avoided easy categorisation, evolving from rap-like indie sleaze to full-blown rock n roll wash-ups playing dive bars on the moon in their most recent album.
That latest offering divided fans for its stripped-back, experimental sound, however many are more than likely willing to give them another shot with their upcoming project. From the small snapshots we’ve heard, it sounds like the band has settled somewhere in the middle with their latest effort.
We bet that it’ll sound good on the dancefloor.
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