46 | SATURDAY | 30.04.22 | The GuardianCULTURE
Words: Laura Barton
Photography: María José GoveaArcade Fire were indie royalty,
beloved by Bowie and Obama.
But after some high-concept
hijinks turned off fans, married
bandleaders Win Butler and
Régine Chassagne went back to
basics with an LP about Trump,
togetherness and tough love
album, 2017 ’s Everything Now , that rattled fans the
most. The album was accompanied by a high-concept
p ro mot io n a l c a mp a i g n c l a i m i n g t h at A r c ade F i r e we r e
now part of a multinational corporation. They named
their tour Infi nite Content, and posted parodic record
r e v ie w s , f a ke ne w s s to r ie s , i ro n ic p ro duc t pl ac e me nt s.
To some, it was a glittering commentary on the
consumer age; to others it seemed sneering, over-
earnest and ill-conceived. To many, it was
uncomfortably removed from the visceral heart-swell
of their live shows.
This month, the band release their sixth album, We,
a record they describe as being about “the forces that
pull us away from the people we love ... [and] the urgent
ne e d to ove r c o me t he m ”. T h i s b e i n g A r c ade F i r e, t he r e
is a hefty intellectual backstory, nods to the
supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* and a guest turn
by Peter Gabriel. But it also stands as the band’s most
tender record since their early output; spacious and
simple and sweet, an album born out of the steady
closeness of pandemic days.
Butler, Chassagne and their son moved to Louisiana
six years ago, captivated by its mingling of cultures
and unbridled passion for music and creativity. “What’s
that Mark Twain line about there being only three cities
in America?” Butler asks as we walk along Magazine
Street. “New York, San Francisco and New Orleans.
Everything else is Cleveland.”
Butler cuts a conspicuous fi gure: basketball player-
tall , with bleached blond hair, today he is wearing
cream-coloured jeans, a tie-dyed white T-shirt and
black bomber jacket. But he seems to fi t comfortably
in this neighbourhood, greeting the coffee shop
barista warmly and gleefully relating the historyM
ID-MORNING in New
Orleans, and outside an
Uptown coffee shop,
Win Butler is talking
of life in his adopted
city – the basketball,
brass bands , and the
poisonous caterpillars
of the buck moth that,
i n l a t e s p r i n g , f a l l f r o m t h e c i t y ’ s t r e e s o n t o u n s u s p e c t i n g
passersby beneath. He surveys the mighty oaks across
the street, broad-branched and strung with moss.
“Trees run this city,” Butler says. “They’ve defi nitely
seen some shit, those trees.”
With his wife, Régine Chassagne , Butler is best
known for fronting Arcade Fire. The band formed in
Montreal at the turn of the millennium, quickly gained
a reputation as one of the world’s fi nest live acts, and
over the course of fi ve albums became indie music
a r istoc rac y. They were a noi nted by Dav ids Bow ie a nd
Byrne; they won a Grammy, a Juno and a Brit ; they
played Obama’s inauguration ; and frequently used
their platform for political activism, promoting
healthcare nonprofi ts , indigenous protesters and a
number of Haitian charities (Chassagne is of Haitian
descent). More recently, the band raised $100,000 for
the Ukraine Relief Fund by playing a series of small
club shows across the US, including cult New York
venue the Bowery ballroom.
At times they have irked their audiences : the hijinks
that surrounded the launch of their disco-tinged 2013
album Refl ektor – secret gigs, street parties, audience
dress codes – brought faintly unsettling echoes of U2’s
Zoo TV campaign. But it was the release of their last