The Guardian | 30.04.22 | SATURDAY | 47Fire in the disco
Arcade Fire
backstage, on stage
and in the crowd
at New York’s
Bowery Ballroom
in March 2022
of Miss Mae’s , a 24-hour “dirtbag bar” that stands on
the corner of Magazine and Napoleon.
Down the street, Butler leads us into a former
luncheonette, now home to Peaches Records. Peaches,
he says, is some way removed from the record shop he
frequented as a teenager in the suburbs of Houston,
Texas – a chainstore in the mall that mostly sold CDs,
and where he tried to nourish his love of New Order
and the Cure.
“Look at this,” Butler says, holding up an octagonal
copy of the Rolling Stones’ compilation Through the
Past Darkly , and holding forth on the qualities of a good
record sleeve. H is attention alights on Pink Floyd’s Dark
Side of the Moon, and the merits of the short album.
“There’s like four songs on it and a lot of connective
tissue,” he says. “And they sort of stretch it, so you have
this space to hear stuff. That’s not even my favourite
record, but it’s an example of coherence. You look at
the album artwork, you listen to it, it’s very coherent.”
He was seeking something similar on We, he says,
p a r i n g b ac k mo r e s o n g s t h a n e ve r b e fo r e to m a ke a t aut
40-minute record. “We cut some really good shit,” he
says. “That’s how we did it.”
We walk along Napoleon to a Creole-Italian
r e s t au r a nt to me e t C h a s s a g ne. T h i s a f te r no o n , t he r e s t
of the band will arrive in New Orleans to begin tour
rehearsals, and Butler is eager to be back out
in the world again after the restrictions of lockdown.
He recalls the band’s recent show in New York, how
good it felt to be before a crowd once more. “One
hundred people spitting in my face,” he says. “It felt
like being baptised.”
At the counter in Pascal’s Manale , the
oyster shucker Thomas “Uptown T”‘Being back in front
of a crowd, a hundred
people spitting in
your face ... it felt like
being baptised’