The Libertines Update Fans On Fourth Album
By Ed Biggs in Music / Festivals on 05 July 2018
Gary Powell, The Libertines' drummer, spoke about how the band's first album since 2015 is coming along.
They seem to have been in the headlines more frequently for festivals and curious business adventures like opening hotels these days, but The Libertines’ drummer Gary Powell has offered fans a little update on the progress of their fourth album.
The iconic group, fronted by singer-songwriting duo Pete Doherty and Carl Barat, are currently recording the follow-up to 2015’s Anthems For Doomed Youth, an album that followed after an 11-year wait after the band imploded spectacularly the first time round in 2004.
Speaking to Clash magazine, the band’s sticksman Powell confirmed that the Libertines had been recording in their Margate hotel The Albion Rooms’ studio.
“I don’t want to get into that heritage act environment,” he said. “I still think we’re viable enough to bring something to the table and have it feel fresh and new.”
Pete Doherty and Carl Barat performing with The Libertines in 2016
As for what the fourth record might sound like, Powell revealed that the group wouldn’t “necessarily be going down the electronic music path”, but that “elements of that can be added to it.”
More: The Libertines to headline and curate line-up for Wheels & Fins festival 2018
“It would also be nice to start messing around with interesting tempos,” he continued. “Our last album was quite conventional in our approach to tempos and music. If you stripped the music back and took the lyrics off it literally could’ve been anybody playing it. It didn’t feel as special as the first ones.”
“The last thing in the world we would attempt to do would be to reinvent the wheel. We have our own identity and we’ll stick to our own identity as much as we can do. It’s made us who we are. But having said that, there is an opportunity for us to investigate and to investigate new approaches to what we do.”
While previous statements from the band indicated that the new record would be arriving in 2018, Powell revealed that that was no longer very likely and that fans would almost certainly have to wait until next year.
“We need to get back into that frame of mind, of not just making a record, but making something that’s quite special,” he said. “We’re just going to take our time and do what we need to do.”
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