The Guardian | 30.04.22 | SATURDAY | 49CULTURE
Stewart stands beside a mound of silver shells,
discussing the peaceful pleasures of Cyrano de
Bergerac, jazz, poetry and softly spoken people. We
are drinking martinis, and Butler is trying to persuade
me that the best way to eat an oyster is to sit it atop a
saltine cracker, with horseradish, ketchup and a little
lemon juice. Chassagne stands beside him and
unceremoniously slugs black a Gulf oyster from its
shell. Stewart is impressed. “You knocked that down
like you just did a shot of good bourbon!” he tells her.
“I caught your rhythm. You have a lot of good energy.”
CHASSAGNE’S ENERGY has always been undeniable.
When Butler first saw her she was singing jazz
standards at an art opening in Montreal, and he
immediately asked her to join his f ledgling band.
The strands of what she has described as her
“grandmother music” – opera and Jacques Brel and
Edith Piaf, somehow melding with Butler’s art pop
inf luences. On stage, they perform a similar feat:
Chassagne singing, dancing, shifting between
accordion, keys and xylophone, seemingly existing in
her own orbit as the rest of the band play on.
Back at the table this lunchtime, she sits in a black
batwing top and black jeans, recalling how the new
album took root in pre-Covid America, in the days of
the Trump presidency. “It was pretty turbulent times
in the US,” she says. “You would wake up and you had
no idea what was going to happen.” The band began
work on a record they hoped might ref lect that
turbulence: tracks such as the slow, syrupy End of the
Empire refl ecting the decline of western power, with
references to the cauterising eff ect of television, the
urge to unsubscribe and watching the moon on the
ocean “where California used to be”.
The album opens with Age of Anxiety I and II, tracks
t h at t a ke t he i r n a me f ro m L aw r e nc e Fe rl i n g he t t i’s 195 8
poem I Am Waiting. When Butler was 15, his beatnik
English teacher invited his friend Ferlinghetti to read
at his school. It was a life-changing moment for Butler;
so much so that he stole a copy of the poet’s Coney
I sl a nd of t he M i nd f rom t he s c ho ol l ibra r y. Not s o long
ago, he found the book in a box of his belongings and
began rereading. When he came across I Am Waiting ,
“I just started weeping”, he says. “All the themes in
that poem, it’s like all the shit I write about. Like looking
for the soul of America, waiting for the American eight
ba l l to st ra ig hten up a nd fl y right. It got so deep in me.
Like a spirit got in me.”
Butler’s relationship with his homeland has always
been complicated and contradictory and highly
charged. “This shit is fucking rotten, but there’s
beaut i f u l t h i ngs about it,” he says. “I l ive i n A mer ica, I
can’t believe I still live in America. But there’s something
about it that I can’t quit. And as an artist you’re trying
to break something open and let the light in.”
He talks about the war in Iraq and the war in
Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine. “And it’s poor
people who suff er,” he says. “Always, everywhere,
a lw ay s p o o r p e ople s u ff er. Russian oligarchs are losing
one of their boats, like boo hoo. Which boat did you
lose? They’re all fi ne. But all the money is blood money,
it’s all from the suff ering of poor people .”
What role can music play? Butler pauses. “We’re the
court jesters,” he says. “We’re performing in the court.
The infrastructure of the thing is money. I don’t know
the answer. But you can kind of undercut it.”
Across the table, Chassagne frowns. “It’s not the
court,” she says fi rmly. “There’s no prerequisite on who
to pl ay mu s ic fo r. We pl ay mu s ic i n ho s p it a l s , fo r dy i n g
patients, we played at the inauguration. It’s food for
the soul. It’s not that the music cures the community,
but the music is the evidence that there is a community.
It’s like evidence of life.”
Arcade Fire’s lineup has shifted over the years,
but for We it numbered Richard Reed Parry,
Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara and Butler’s younger
brother Will , who has since amicably left the band.When the pandemic began, they had all fl own to New
Orleans to begin work on the new record. “And then our
phones keep beeping and we’re getting texts saying
fl ights are getting cancelled, borders getting closed,”
r e me m b e r s C h a s s a g ne. “ S o we h ad to do a n e me r ge nc y
plan for them to go back immediately. Everything
was falling apart.”
When everyone departed, Chassagne and Butler
were left with three days’ worth of demos. “Glorifi ed
writing sessions”, as Butler puts it. “But at a point, I
thought: ‘Well, this might be all there is so I’m going
to work on this as if we’re never going to play music
again,’” he says. “And I realised that even just three
days, there was so much music in there. So it was like:
well, that’s all we have. This is it. It’s DIY.”
For months, the pair stayed home and wrote with
an intensity that they had been unable to fi nd since
their debut album, Funeral. “We were stuck in our
hou s e a nd s o wh at do you do? ” s ay s C h a s s a g ne. “ I g ue s s
the interesting thing is that when you’re stuck with
you r s e l f you a s k : ‘ W h at a m I he r e fo r?! ’ S o we j u s t w rote
and wrote and recorded ... ” The songs soon began to
pile up. “We just worked every day,” says Butler. “All
night, as if it was due the next day, but for like, a year.”
On Butler and Chassagne’s fi rst date they went to
see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Chassagne had
failed to mention that the fi lm would have French
subtitles, and so she spent the movie whispering
translations to Butler in the dark of the cinema. Today
over lunch, there seems a similar connection;
a closeness to their dynamic that I have not seen since
I interviewed them back in 2005 for Funeral. Their
sentences frequently overlap, Butler picking up where
Chassagne leaves off.
Their new album might come with a clever marketing
campaign, slick videos, an artful mission statement
that mentions Carl Jung and Martin Luther King. But
at its heart lies something quite simple: the connection
that spans between the extended family of a band, that
exists between a band and its audience, that binds two
people over a 20-year relationship.
There are two distinct halves to this record: the fi rst
tells of isolation, the second is about resolve. “It’s about
unconditional love, love that ’s not merit-based,” says
Butler. “That’s not about loving someone because they’re
such a good person, or they’re so talented. It’s love that
has nothing to do with what you did, it’s something that’s
freely given, and that’s why it’s the most precious thing.”
He begins to sip Chassagne’s untouched martini.
“Loving someone is hard,” he says. “It’s up and down,
it’s a tough thing, but it’s also the shit.” Chassagne nods.
“And the beauty’s in the commitment.”
Outside, the city is closing down under a tornado
warning, shops shuttering, restaurants hurrying away
their patio chairs. We drive back along Magazine Street
with the windows down and the high winds blowing,
listening to a top-secret remix of Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit
Hole) , a call-and-response track between the pair.
“ Not h i n g c a n e ve r r e pl ac e it / W he n it ’s go ne you c a n s t i l l
taste it,” runs the lyric. “Going on this trip together ... ”
In the front seat, Butler shakes his head; behind him
Chassagne pats her hands rhythmically into the air,
silently fi nding her way into the song. We drive on
through the Garden District , past a seafood boil and
the alligator museum, and on towards Arcade Fire’s
rehearsal space. Outside, against the darkening sky,
the tops of the oak trees wave wildly.
We i s relea sed on Fr iday.‘I can’t believe
I live in America,
but there’s
something about
it that I can’t quit’
Sliding doors (Left to right)
Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed
Parry, Tim Kingbury,
Win Butler, Régine
Chassagne and Jeremy Gara