Southern rockers Blackberry Smoke have completed work on their fourth album, says frontman Charlie Starr – although they're aiming to keep some of the details secret as long as possible.
He believes they’ve “mixed it up a little more” than they did on 2012’s The Whippoorwill, their first record to be released in the UK.
But he insists they haven’t moved too far away from the hard blues rock that’s been gaining them attention.
The record, which hasn’t been named yet, was produced by Brendan O’Brien. Starr tells Rolling Stone: “It’s not a huge departure – there’s really big rock’n’roll songs and some laid-back moments as well.
“We recorded live a lot again and we tried a few different things; some of it’s top-secret but nothing that’s so radically different. Have no fear. We didn’t make a hip-hop record.”
Track titles include Payback’s A Bitch and Holding All The Roses, and Starr says of the latter number: “People are really going to be blown away by it. We’re over the moon – it’s a song that’ll knock your head off. It’s just relentless.”
And he vows they’re not changing their sound in an attempt to find a short-cut to the top of the ladder. “We want to play for more and more people every night, obviously – but if it meant sacrificing one bit of the integrity of the music, or ourselves as musicians, we’d shun that.”
Blackberry Smoke have just released a live DVD entitled_ Leave A Scar_. They return to the UK in October:
Oct 15: Dublin Academy
Oct 16: Glasgow O2 ABC
Oct 17: Manchester Ritz
Oct 19: London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire
Oct 21: Cambridge Junction
Oct 22: Birmingham Institute
