Arctic Monkeys have announced their first live dates since 2014. The Sheffield band will play a number of European and American festivals this summer. The sole UK appearance announced so far is a headline slot at Glasgow’s TRNSMT festival on 1 July.
The four-piece start their run at Barcelona’s Primavera Soundon 2 June. Other European dates include the Netherlands’s Best Kept Secret (8 June) and Finland’s Flow (11 August). The group have announced one US appearance, at Firefly festival in Delaware (14–17 June).
Arctic Monkeys are expected to release their sixth studio album later this year. They went on hiatus after headlining Reading festival in 2014, with frontman Alex Turner telling NME it was the “perfect place to leave things for a while”. In 2016, they teased work on a new album via a series of gnomic Instagram posts, and last September bassist Nick O’Malley confirmed that progress was underway for a planned 2018 release.
We're pleased to announce our 2018 festival dates. Full information at https://t.co/j1hCeXFZBM pic.twitter.com/0LSBftUUZb
— Arctic Monkeys (@ArcticMonkeys) January 29, 2018
The as-yet untitled album follows 2013’s AM, which reached No 1 in the UK charts and featured singles including Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? and the Grammy-nominated Do I Wanna Know?
During the band’s break, Turner released Everything You’ve Come to Expect, the second album with his other band the Last Shadow Puppets. Drummer Matt Helders contributed to Iggy Pop’s 2016 album Post Pop Depression, which also featured Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. The band’s debut, 2006’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, was recently revealed to be the biggest-selling Mercury prize winner of all time.
