RSS
Help
Cart
Arcade Fire Biography
The novelist Thomas Wolfe coined the famous adage "you can't go home again." The members of Arcade Fire know this, because they tried. But when memories of youth stem from suburbs constructed for convenience, not permanence, those childhood memories become that much harder to trace.
Montreal's Arcade Fire explored the theme of neighborhoods on their 2004 breakthrough album Funeral (chosen by Rolling Stone as the #1 album of the '00s). In 2009, during a year off after a world tour for 2007's Neon Bible, frontman Win Butler received an email from an old friend he grew up with in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. "He sent us a picture of him with his daughter on his shoulders at the mall around the corner from where we lived," says Win, "and the combination of seeing this familiar place and seeing my friend with his child brought back a lot of feeling from that time. I found myself trying to remember the town that we grew up in and trying to retrace as much as I could remember."
At the same time, other band members of a similarly suburban origin across Canada had revisited their childhood environs and, in some cases, found there was not much left: buildings were boarded up, if they still existed at all; new roads and rivers had magically appeared, altering the landscape that now only existed in faded photographs. When they reconvened, the first song they wrote was The Suburbs' title track.
"We started working on the song, and once that started to sound like music, it felt like we were making an album," says Win. As the songs of The Suburbs started to take shape, a cohesive group of songs emerged, drawing on themes of loss and renewal, of drawing inspiration from scarcity, of generations past and future, of responsibility and maturity, of hoping that something pure can last.
These aren't unusual themes for the band - some of these songs would fit in easily on their debut 2003 EP, Us Kids Know. But if Funeral was driven by youthful exuberance and Neon Bible absorbed the weight of the world, The Suburbs, like its namesake, revels in open space, reflections on long drives, and contemplating possibilities. There is more breadth and beauty than on any previous Arcade Fire recording, featuring sparse pop ("Modern Man"), icy new wave epics ("No Celebration"), anthemic punk ("Month of May"), and lush balladry ("Suburban War"). Yet, they still sound hungry on hard-driving tracks like "Empty Room" and "Ready to Start," and with lyrics decrying wasted time, arms folded tight, and cities with no children.
The seven-piece band still believes that it takes a village to perform a song, but there is plenty of room to breathe on any given track; tiny details are doled out bit by bit. That attention to detail, that refusal to accept easy answers, embodies much of what the Arcade Fire does. This fiercely independent band has faced pressure from every corner of the music industry but carved out something beyond the grasps of the major-label system with great success, a combination of Internet word-of-mouth and old-fashioned live show impressions.
"We were lucky to be left to our own devices," says Win. "That afforded us a lot of control over our own destiny, which a lot of bands that are my heroes either never got or only got late in their careers. We've felt fortunate because - what else do you want? We're making records the way we want, and it's a great position to be in."
~Michael Barclay, July 2010 (for Merge Records)
Montreal's Arcade Fire explored the theme of neighborhoods on their 2004 breakthrough album Funeral (chosen by Rolling Stone as the #1 album of the '00s). In 2009, during a year off after a world tour for 2007's Neon Bible, frontman Win Butler received an email from an old friend he grew up with in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. "He sent us a picture of him with his daughter on his shoulders at the mall around the corner from where we lived," says Win, "and the combination of seeing this familiar place and seeing my friend with his child brought back a lot of feeling from that time. I found myself trying to remember the town that we grew up in and trying to retrace as much as I could remember."
At the same time, other band members of a similarly suburban origin across Canada had revisited their childhood environs and, in some cases, found there was not much left: buildings were boarded up, if they still existed at all; new roads and rivers had magically appeared, altering the landscape that now only existed in faded photographs. When they reconvened, the first song they wrote was The Suburbs' title track.
"We started working on the song, and once that started to sound like music, it felt like we were making an album," says Win. As the songs of The Suburbs started to take shape, a cohesive group of songs emerged, drawing on themes of loss and renewal, of drawing inspiration from scarcity, of generations past and future, of responsibility and maturity, of hoping that something pure can last.
These aren't unusual themes for the band - some of these songs would fit in easily on their debut 2003 EP, Us Kids Know. But if Funeral was driven by youthful exuberance and Neon Bible absorbed the weight of the world, The Suburbs, like its namesake, revels in open space, reflections on long drives, and contemplating possibilities. There is more breadth and beauty than on any previous Arcade Fire recording, featuring sparse pop ("Modern Man"), icy new wave epics ("No Celebration"), anthemic punk ("Month of May"), and lush balladry ("Suburban War"). Yet, they still sound hungry on hard-driving tracks like "Empty Room" and "Ready to Start," and with lyrics decrying wasted time, arms folded tight, and cities with no children.
The seven-piece band still believes that it takes a village to perform a song, but there is plenty of room to breathe on any given track; tiny details are doled out bit by bit. That attention to detail, that refusal to accept easy answers, embodies much of what the Arcade Fire does. This fiercely independent band has faced pressure from every corner of the music industry but carved out something beyond the grasps of the major-label system with great success, a combination of Internet word-of-mouth and old-fashioned live show impressions.
"We were lucky to be left to our own devices," says Win. "That afforded us a lot of control over our own destiny, which a lot of bands that are my heroes either never got or only got late in their careers. We've felt fortunate because - what else do you want? We're making records the way we want, and it's a great position to be in."
~Michael Barclay, July 2010 (for Merge Records)
Arcade Fire All Music Guide Biography
Régine Chassagne, Richard Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and brothers Win Butler and William Butler comprise the Arcade Fire, an experimental indie rock outfit hailing from the musical hotbed of Montreal. The five-piece band formed in the summer of 2003, after Butler spotted Chassagne singing jazz standards at a local art exhibit at Concordia University. The two quickly became inseparable, both professionally and personally, and gathered Parry on organ, Kingsbury on bass, and Win Butler's younger brother William on synthesizer and percussion to form the Arcade Fire -- the band fleshed out an eclectic mix of bossa nova, punk, and classically tinged songs, drawing upon everything from U2's passion to David Bowie's eclecticism in the process. A self-titled EP appeared in 2003, and the Arcade Fire signed with Merge Records and prepped for their first studio album that same year. Win Butler and Régine Chassagne were married in August, but tragedies nevertheless plagued the band, including the deaths of Chassagne's grandmother, the Butlers' grandfather (swing-era composer/arranger Alvino Rey), and Parry's aunt. The band persevered, and its debut album, Funeral, arrived in September 2004. The record was met with unanimous acclaim -- both commercially and critically -- and the Arcade Fire extended their resulting tour into 2005, playing such high-profile festivals as Lollapalooza and Coachella while touring the world, appearing on the cover of Time magazine's Canadian edition, and garnering a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album. Following an exhausting year, the Arcade Fire decamped to a church outside of Montreal to work on a second release. The ambitious Neon Bible arrived in March 2007, featuring such grand ornamentations as a pipe organ, a military choir, and a full orchestra. ~ Andrew Leahey & MacKenzie Wilson, All Music Guide
Buy
