English rockers Arctic Monkeys have dropped a brand new song to eager fans this week, after playing several new songs as part of their recent touring dates, along with ‘Mad Sounds’, a live performance which set Youtube on fire earlier this week.
The new single, ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ is the first official taste of the Sheffield four-piece’s follow up to 2011’s Suck It And See.
Last time the Arctic Monkeys gave the world a taste of what they’d been up to, it was to an audience of billions worldwide to a visual soundtrack of cyclists dressed as luminescent butterflies, performing a suitably patriotic cover of The Beatles’ ‘Come Together’ at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony – with the band’s take of the legendary Abbey Road cut swiftly rising to the top of the UK charts.
A mite more successful than their Record Store Day exclusive from April 2012, though it was no slouch in the sales stakes itself (peaking at #10), the dual-sided vinyl single of R U Mine?/Electricity was the band’s first new studio material since Suck It And See.
We’ve since learnt that ‘R U Mine’ isn’t going to feature on the new album, but frontman Alex Turner has told us that the single was an indication of their new sound. “I think we’re going to go the direction of those heavier tunes. We did ‘R U Mine’, and I think that’s where it’s going to be at for us for the next record.”
You can have a listen to the new single “Do I Wanna Know?’ below.
The band are aiming to release their yet-to-be-named fifth studio album by the end of 2013, and ‘Do I Wanna Know?’ along with ‘Mad Sounds’ are expected to feature on it.
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Alex Turner had dropped hints that the band wanted to go back to their roots and record in Sheffield, but late last year one of their mums spilled the beans that the group had instead been recording in the America, returning to the famous Joshua Tree desert in California, where the band partially recorded parts of 2009 record Humbug with co-producer and Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Josh Homme.
The band are headlining the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury next weekend and are expected to air more new material during their performance. Turner has confirmed that the album should be out by September.
