From LA’s Sunset Sound to a pub in Parsons Green, the likes of THE BLACK KEYS, THE WEATHER STATION, NICK CAVE, RIDE, PAUL McCARTNEY, MC5, KAMASI WASHINGTON, RICHARD THOMPSON, JOHN GRANT, MYRIAM GENDRON, MICHAEL HEAD, ARAB STRAP, HAWKWIND, MERCURY REV, JEFF TWEEDY and many more of your favourite artists have been busy summoning the soundtrack to 2024. Expect flugelhorns and highlife grooves, striking androids and strange meteorological phenomena, hot-rod cars and “an AI with aposh voice talking about the hunting habits of the common mole”…

Dan The Automator, The Black Keys and Beck at LA’s Sunset Sound

THE BLACK KEYS

TITLE: To be confirmed

LABEL: Nonesuch

RELEASE DATE: April

Noel Gallagher, Beck and Alice Cooper are on the guestlist for the duo’s “party record”

PATRICK CARNEY: Dan makes alot of records for Easy Eye, and when he does those, he’s always writing and collaborating with the artists. But the only other person we’d written with [in The Black Keys] was Danger Mouse. So this time we decided to go alittle deeper into our Rolodex and call some people we’d been talking about working with for along time. Beck was the first one, because we’ve known him for two decades, and the timing just worked out perfectly. He happened to be in Nashville, so he came by Easy Eye for acouple days and we knocked out afew songs, one of them being the first song on the record, “This Is Nowhere”.

DAN AUERBACH: Beck is very prolific with his writing, especially lyrical content –it’s like turning on afaucet. So whenever we get him in the studio, we just hit the ground running and we’re making songs as soon as we can.

CARNEY: It came out so easy that we were trying to think of other people that we could throw in the mix, and the person at the top of the list was Noel Gallagher. Everyone was like, “Noel doesn’t really write with other people.” But he agreed to meet us in London. We booked some time at Toe Rag and recorded two songs with Noel in three days. With Beck, most of the time we’d have the music there by the time he showed up, so we were just looking for words and melody. But with Noel, we started the songs from scratch. Noel is hilarious and we hit it off instantly. It couldn’t have gone smoother. He was very meticulous about finding the right transitional chords for each section, it was amazing. Dan started calling him the ‘Chord Board’.

Patrick Carney, Noel Gallagher and Dan Auerbach at Toe Rag Studios in east London

LARRY NIEHUES

AUERBACH: At Toe Rag, we were all in the room: Pat with the drums, Iwas playing bass, Noel had his 335, and our friend Leon [Michels] was on keyboards. We were just in a circle in this tiny room, recording live, working up songs in real time, literally figuring out chord changes and melodies. Every song that we got with Noel is alive take, it just felt really good.

CARNEY: We embraced the idea of getting out of our comfort zone, which is Dan’s studio. We were trying to have an adventure while we made the record. So we booked afew sessions out in LA: we worked at Valentine in the Valley, and in Sunset Sound. We got in aroom with Dan The Automator; we did atrack with Greg Kurstin as well. While we were out there, we’d do these record hangs where we’d invite afriend or two and bring our 45s and basically spin records for four hours.

AUERBACH: These record hangs were ahuge inspiration for the album, they really helped shape the overall feeling. I think the record is almost like aparty record, in away. And it’s because we were having so much fun –we were travelling together, hanging out, getting obsessed with 45s, watching how the crowd was reacting. It was really fun to have that going on simultaneously while we were making the record.

CARNEY: My neighbour was Alice Cooper’s agent for along time, and every time he’s in town we all squeeze in around of golf. We were out on the course, so Iasked him, “Do you wanna pop in the studio and get on this song we have?” And he came in the next day.