The circus around Arctic Monkeys new album ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ is fascinating. As of writing, there’s yet to be any music played publicly from the record, other than a short snippet of a new track in the background of a teaser video.
That doesn’t mean nobody has heard anything, but does force the industry’s cogs and wheels to act as if they haven’t.
So, when a listing for one of the band’s new US shows copied and pasted a new press biography, it accidentally ended up revealing all kinds of new info which previously had been under wraps – amongst them, the first line of the album.
That meant a bunch of people – some of whom have almost certainly already heard a lyric – have to ask the band’s label, who possibly sent them the music with the lyric, if the lyric they know is correct is correct. Which they then confirm, even though they’d already confirmed it privately previously. Embargoes, eh?
Anyway, as Pitchfork reports, the confirmed first line of ‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ – and opening track ‘Star Treatment’ – reads: “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes, now look at the mess you made me make/Hitchhiking with a monogrammed suitcase, miles away from any half-useful imaginary highway.”
The bio also reveals that Alex Turner has been building the model on the album cover himself, that ‘Golden Trunks’ has a jibe at Donald Trump’s expense (“The leader of the free world reminds you of a wrestler wearing tight golden trunks”), and the record features a bunch of guests, including Klaxon’s James Righton and Tame Impala’s Cam Avery.
But mostly, Alex Turner says the Strokes. And y’know. Indie.
You can read the full bio, via Reddit, here.
‘Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino’ arrives on 11th May. And we can’t tell you any more than that. Embargoes.