When “Alpha Zulu” dropped in June, Phoenix gave fans no indication of a full-length studio release. As it turns out, that was the title track for their seventh album, scheduled to drop on November 4th. This news came with the release of another single featuring Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig — “Tonight” is the band’s first song to feature vocals from non-member. Check it out below:

Alpha Zulu was recorded at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris during the pandemic. “We felt it would be a fantastic adventure to create something out of nothing in a museum,” guitarist-keyboardist Branco Brancowitz said. “And so with the pandemic, we could live exactly this scene, to be alone in an empty museum.” (Consequence)

Regarding the overwhelming feeling of recording at the museum, guitarist Christian Mazzalai explained that “I was a bit afraid, when there was too much beauty around us, that to create something could be a bit hard. But it was the opposite: we couldn’t stop producing music. In these first 10 days, we wrote almost all of the album.”

Alpha Zulu Tracklist:
01. Alpha Zulu
02. Tonight (feat. Ezra Koenig)
03. The Only One
04. After Midnight
05. Winter Solstice
06. Season 2
07. Artefact
08. All Eyes on Me
09. My Elixir
10. Identical

Photo Credit: Brett Padelford