**UPDATE** Read our review on the newly released Arctic Monkeys album “The Car”
The 10-track record will arrive on Friday 21 October via Domino. It follows the band’s 2018 Tranquillity Base & Casino and 2013’s AM and was produced by the band’s long-time producer James Ford between Butley Priory in Suffolk, La Frette in Paris and RAK Studios in London.
A press release describes how the album “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”.
Such an approach to the record was confirmed and expanded on in an interview lead singer Alex Turner gave to The Big Issue, in which he compared how it would sound in comparison to the band’s previous starry-sounding record.
Photo: Press
“On this record, sci-fi is off the table. We are back to earth”, Turner said. “I think we’ve got closer to a better version of a more dynamic overall sound with this record.”
“The strings on this record come in and out of focus and that was a deliberate move and hopefully everything has its own space. There’s time the band comes to the front and then the strings come to the front.”
Turner also explained how the decision to record the album in separate parts, rather than one main recording studio, was inspired by older rock-and-roll legends.
“There’s a bunch of Led Zeppelin and Stones records where they were in this house in the country and then they went and sorted it all out and overdubbed it elsewhere,” Turner revealed.
“We went there [to Butley Priory, a converted monastery in Suffolk] in the summer, took all the equipment, got the raw material and then took it on elsewhere.”
Just to whet the appetite even more, here’s the tracklist for the album (words which currently don’t mean much, but will no doubt come to signify an awful lot for fans):
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
The Car
Big Ideas
Hello You
For those fans heading to Reading & Leeds this weekend, they’ll likely get a sneak peak of what’s to come as they headline on Saturday (Reading) and Sunday (Leeds). The band already played new track ‘I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am’ at Zurich Openair festival in Switzerland last night (August 23).
As Jessie Atkinson writes for whynow, based on their entire catalogue thus far, “as we head into this new era, it’s important to remember that whatever we’re going to get won’t be anything like what you’re predicting. Besides: predicting, wishing and hoping will only take the joy out of the grand reveal anyway.
“Trust Arctic Monkeys. Whatever they make next will be electrifying, interesting — and different from what’s come before. It’s only what we’ve come to expect.”
Fans can pre-order the album here, including a 12″ grey vinyl and cassette.
