Nov 10, 2022
By Mark Redfern
Photography by Alysse Gafkjen
The Arcs (the project led by The Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach) are releasing a new album, Electrophonic Chronic, on January 27, 2023 via Easy Eye Sound. Now they have shared its second single, “Heaven is a Place,” which is in tribute to their former bandmate Richard Swift, who died in 2018. Listen below.
“This new record is all about honoring Swift,” Auerbach says of the album, in a press release. “It’s a way for us to say goodbye to him.”
Electrophonic Chronic was produced by Auerbach along with the band’s Leon Michels, and was largely recorded with Swift before his death. The band’s debut album, Yours, Dreamily, was released in 2015.
After Swift’s passing, Michels says, “I think all of us couldn’t really listen to the music, couldn’t really face it and try to finish it.” But during the pandemic Auerbach and Michels reconvened to finish the album.
Previously The Arcs shared an animated video for the album’s first single, “Keep On Dreamin’.”
Auerbach also said in a previous press release: “Whether it was New York City or Nashville or L.A. or Swift’s hometown of Cottage Grove, Oregon, wherever we were, we would always get in the studio together. Always. It was our favorite thing to do. It’s rare that you meet a group of people that you click with like that, who you instantly bond with. We were just having fun, making sounds, making music. It was an amazing time for me.”
Michels added: “There are probably between 80 and 100 tracks that we laid down, because we just constantly recorded after we put out Yours, Dreamily. It was so much fun to be in the studio once again, so we were just making music all the time. I think there was always a plan to make a follow-up record.”