Phoenix is getting ready to release their new album, Alpha Zulu. They unveiled the single “Tonight” and brought it to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert with a digital Ezra Koenig. Last night, they took another single, the album title track, to Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The performance is vivacious and invigorating; the vocals are clean and animated against a transfixing bassline. It sounds identical to the recording. The track is more atmospheric than “Tonight” — “Alpha Zulu” is exuberant but has a sense of mystery within the sputtering beats. It only heightens the anticipation for the rest of the long-awaited LP, which is finally arriving just next month.
“Alpha Zulu” was their first new song in two years, since 2020’s “Identical” (which itself was also at the time the band’s first new song in two years). A press release noted that the song title and lyric come from “a phrase Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars heard a pilot repeating over the radio during a turbulent flight in a storm. The urgency of the phrase stayed with him, and the band’s new song was born.”
Watch their vivacious performance of “Alpha Zulu” above.
Alpha Zulu is out 11/4 via Loyaute/Glassnote Records. Pre-order it here.