The Libertines drummer Gary Powell has confirmed when the band’s forthcoming new album will be released.
Speaking in a new interview with Oliver Spencer the sticksman gave an update as to when the follow up to the band’s 2015 LP ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’ will see the light of day.
He said: “We’ve just recorded our latest album. I think we do one every 10 years or so. Yes. So expect the next one to come from the grave! The album comes out in January [2024].”
The band have been working on their new record since 2019 and last year worked on the record in Jamaica.
Speaking on NME‘s In Conversation series, frontman Carl Barât said at the time: “Sonically, we want to do something we haven’t done before… I think we’ll be looking to do something with a different energy than before. But we’re not at that stage yet.”
The band also shared details of a new track called called ‘Shiver’ which Pete Doherty explained has “got a real sentimental hark back” to previous Libertines cuts ‘The Delaney’, ‘France’ and ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’. Co-frontman Barât agreed, adding: “Yeah, ‘Shiver’’s great. I was listening to that last night, actually.”
Powell also told NME previously that his focus was on “forging forward” with the band’s fourth album. “The good thing is everybody’s been writing,” he said. “Obviously, we’re not going to try and reinvent the wheel… but I think we can push the boat out a little more while still bringing something that has the same emotional integrity and dynamism that the audience craves when they come to a Libertines show.”
When they first started work on the record in 2019, Doherty said that the band had been exploring a number of ambitious directions on new material, likening it to the diversity of The Clash‘s divisive ‘Sandinista’.
“Carl wants to do a ‘Sandinista’ thing with all these mad ideas that we’ve got, so we’ll have all these freestyle things and folky things, then there’s the more traditional Doherty/Barat songs,” Doherty said at the time. “I don’t think the Gary and John songs are part of that, because they’re really, really strong songs.”
Reviewing their last album former NME journalist Matt Wilkinson described the record as the “the most rounded album The Libertines have ever made”.
Meanwhile, a new documentary about Pete Doherty will premiere at the Zurich Film Festival later this month.
