Arctic Monkeys Discuss Next Album Backstage at Lollapalooza Brazil -- Exclusive Video

Arctic Monkeys first got on board with Lollapalooza when they played the American version of the alt-festival last year. So it was no surprise the band with the fastest selling debut album in UK chart history would travel all the way to South America to headline night two of the first Brazilian edition of the musical extravaganza.

The post-punk quartet had already made the trip from Sheffield all the way to São Paulo once before, when they played Tim Festival in 2007, so drummer Matt Helders and bass player Nick O'Malley were in familiar territory when they sat down with Spinner on the rainy second day of Lolla.

"[We love] the food and drink here," Helders told Spinner, reflecting on what brought him back to Brazil.

"And the sunshine, when it's not like today," O'Malley chimed in.

The band had just come off doing a slew of shows across North America with the Black Keys when they made the trip down south to play not only in Brazil, but also in Chile. Once they wrap up their festival duties back in the US with Coachella and Edgefest, they'll hit the road again, with more American stops on their arena tour.

There are also rumors floating around about a new record from the foursome in the works with new singles "R U Mine?" and "Electricity" making listeners wonder what direction the band will take next.


"It's quite early days yet. We've not really got any songs for it at all," says O'Malley. "So it's difficult to say [what the record will be like]. But we're enjoying playing sort of fast songs at the minute, so maybe that'll be an indication that it may go that way."

"['R U Mine' and 'Electricity' are] just stand-alone singles," Helders added, "but like he said, the songs like that are the most recent things we've done, so if that's any sign of what kind of songs we're writing, maybe we'll go that way."

The two new songs from Arctic Monkeys came out as a special release for Record Store Day. Helders and O'Malley said they decided to give buyers something a bit different to pick up at their favourite -- and possibly soon-to-be obsolete -- music store.

"I think [Record Store Day] needs to happen to keep people aware that there's a better way of listening to music available," said Helders. "And it's good. Then bands get involved and do something special to give people an incentive to buy it, I suppose. For instance, our record is purple, which means it's more attractive to the eye. I don't know why we chose purple. We'd already done a white one before."

Helders may not know what was behind the decision, but O'Malley seems to have figured out why purple was the colour of choice.

"We're big fans of Barney," he said.