French indie rockers Phoenix have announced that their seventh studio album Alpha Zulu will arrive in November. The band’s first album in five years – following on from 2017’s Ti Amo – was produced by the band themselves, and recorded at Musée des Arts Décoratifs in the Palais du Louvre, Paris.
To coincide with the announcement, the band have shared the album’s third single, ‘Tonight’, following on from ‘Identical’ in 2020 and the album’s title track earlier this year. The new song features guest vocals from Vampire Weekend front person Ezra Koening, marking the first time the band have had another vocalist on one of their songs. ‘Tonight’ arrives alongside an Oscar Boyson-directed video, shot in both Tokyo and Paris.
Watch Phoenix’s Video for ‘Tonight’ Below
“We felt it would be a fantastic adventure to create something out of nothing in a museum,” guitarist Laurent ‘Branco’ Brancowitz said in a statement about recording the new album, which is set to arrive on Friday, 4th November. “And so with the pandemic, we could live exactly this scene, to be alone in an empty museum.”
Per a press release, to work on the album, the band had to enter the museum through a 10-minute walk in darkness, during which they were surrounded by works from the museum – including Napoleon’s “grand, goofy” gold throne. “I was a bit afraid, when there was too much beauty around us, that to create something could be a bit hard,” said guitarist Christian Mazzalai. “But it was the opposite: we couldn’t stop producing music. In these first 10 days, we wrote almost all of the album.”
The band also drew inspiration on the album from their late friend, Philippe Zdar of Cassius, who produced the band’s breakthrough 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix and died in 2019. “We had many moments where we could feel his ideas,” Mazzalai said.
Further Reading
Phoenix On Making “Sinful, Joyful” Music In Dark Times
Love Letter To A Record: Neon Tetra Frontman Josh Allen On Phoenix’s ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’
Phoenix Return With New Song ‘Identical’ From Forthcoming Sofia Coppola Film ‘On The Rocks’
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