Speaking of surprise Grammy Award winners, Phoenix have begun work on their follow-up to 2009’s “Best Alternative Music Album,” Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, in New South Wales, Australia. Our Aussie friends at Pedestrian caught up with Thomas Mars and Deck D’Arcy of Bill Murray’s favorite French quartet in Sydney over the weekend for a Q&A, in which they revealed that they’re “going to record a bunch of percussionists” and an orchestra in Byron Bay to test out new material.
“If it works, we’ll probably come back and record something that’s going to be on the album,” said Mars, describing their new tunes as inspired by the both “nostalgic” and “futuristic” sound of a French high-speed train called the TGV. “It’s very experimental. It’s minimal[istic] music,” he mused, adding that their past work with drum machines is “a little frustrating” and they “want to escape that” for the next LP.
Sounds like a reasonably intriguing departure so far — can’t wait to hear it, obvs. Meanwhile, you can watch Mars and D’Arcy talk LP5 here or preview the non-melodious tones of the TGV below: