Phoenix has revealed its first album over the past five years.
Alpha Zulu, the follow-up to 2017’s Ti Amo, will drop on November 4 through Loyaute/Glassnote. It is self-produced by Phoenix and recorded at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris’ Palais du Louvre.
At this moment, the band has dropped the most recent single, “Tonight,” – which features a duet with Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend – from Alpha Zulu.
Additionally, Phoenix has released a visual for the song, which Oscar Boyson directs.
“Tonight” is the first song from Phoenix with a guest vocalist. The music video was filmed in Tokyo and Paris, partially inside the Musée des Arts Décoratifs studio.
“We felt it would be a fantastic adventure to create something out of nothing in a museum,” band member Laurent “Branco” Brancowitz told the press regarding the space. “And so with the pandemic, we could live exactly this scene to be alone in an empty museum.”
Christian Mazzalai added: “I was a bit afraid when there was too much beauty around us that creating something could be a bit hard.
“But it was the opposite: we couldn’t stop producing music. In these first ten days, we wrote almost all of the album.”
Deck D’Arcy even stressed that “the backstage of the museum is like a mashup. It’s very pop in a way – like how we make music.”
Phoenix Cherishes a Dear Friend
Earlier this year, Phoenix has already released the title track of Alpha Zulu. In addition, they dropped the single “Identical,” which was heard in Sofia Coppola’s latest film, On the Rocks, in 2020. (Coppola and Phoenix’s Thomas Mars are married.)
Meanwhile, in 2019, the band dropped a book, Phoenix: Liberté, Égalité, Phoenix!
Alpha Zulu was mainly based on the band’s late friend and collaborator Philippe Zdar, who died in 2019.
“We lost more than ever, almost,” Christian stated of Zdar. “We had many moments where we could feel his ideas. Jeté, that’s a word he would say when you’re throwing something very fast.”
