Cheap Trick selling new album online

Lead singer Robin Zander (R) and lead guitarist Rick Nielsen perform with their band Cheap Trick at the 6th annual John Varvatos Stuart House Benefit in West Hollywood, California March 9, 2008.

DETROIT (Billboard) - Cheap Trick is stepping outside of the label world to release its next studio album, "The Latest," itself.

The veteran rock group will start taking pre-orders for the 13-track set, which it recorded during the past year mostly in Los Angeles with producer Julian Raymond, on Friday via its official web site, www.cheaptrick.com , and at Amazon.com.

Those who pre-order will receive "The Latest" on June 23, the day Cheap Trick starts it summer tour with Def Leppard and Poison in Camden, N.J.

Amazon will have exclusive rights for one month, and the album will also be available in limited LP and 8-track editions.

Through Amazon and other database information, anyone who's purchased Cheap Trick music, merchandise or concert tickets in the recent past will be notified about the album.

"The Latest" is certainly an album likely to curry favor with the Cheap Trick faithful, filled with anthemic power pop tunes, Beatlesque songs and power ballads. The band's previous album, "Rockford," came out in 2006.

"We wanted to make a record that sounded like 2009, get something that sounds like us this year," drummer Bun E. Carlos explains.

Guitarist Rick Nielsen adds that, "I think it seems like we kinda grew up but didn't too old, 'cause musically there's a lot of different aspects to it. When you hear something like ('Sick Man of Europe'), you think, 'This can't be the same guys.' It sounds too energized for what people expect from somebody who's been around as long as we have...But musically I think it sounds like we grew up a bit."

Besides "The Latest," Cheap Trick has also recorded a version of the "Transformers" theme for the "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" soundtrack, which also comes out June 23.

The group is also planning to release some sort of document from its 2007 Hollywood Bowl performance of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" but is not ready to announce it yet. That performance, a 40th-birthday tribute to the classic album, featured such guest vocalists as Aimee Mann on "Fixing a Hole" and Joan Osborne on "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."

(Editing by Dean Goodman)