Credit: Scottie Hammond

Albert Hammond Jr. confirms The Strokes are working on a new album

Thu 6 April 2023 14:26, UK

Guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. has confirmed The Strokes are working on the follow-up to 2020’s album, The New Abnormal.

Last year, producer Rick Rubin revealed he’d been working with the band in Costa Rica, and now Hammond JR. has stated a new album by The Strokes is on the way. “I think he was just so excited about where we recorded,” Hammond Jr said in a new interview with NME. “But I don’t know what to say about it – I don’t have any information on it. It’s not like it’s happening and I’m hiding something. We went and did a bunch of recording. It could come out a year or two years from now – it’s an unknown amount of time when it’ll be finished but, yes, we are working on another record.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Hammond Jr. also discussed his new solo album, Melodies on Hiatus, which is his first LP since 2018, and features Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. “I met them early on, and those guys came out to my first solo gig in London in 2007,” he said of the Sheffield band. “I became friendly with Matt, and I’ve known him and chatted with him over the years. I just love the way he plays drums. It just seemed like it’d be a fun, casual day in the studio, and it was.”

Hammond Jr.’s new album was launched with his new single ‘100-99’, which arrived accompanied by a video earlier this week. “It’s sprawling but interconnected in a special kind of way, and we wanted to maintain that visually as well,” said directors Angela Ricciardi and Silken Weinberg. They added: “The five videos we made for ‘Melodies on Hiatus’ take place in a series of rooms all within one larger space, different scenes that string together one very long night.”

Watch the video for ‘100-99’ below.