Arcade Fire

[yellowy eyes]

There's an article in the new issue of Uncut.

 

What Win Butler Saw

The Arcade Fire's frontman on his 'year off': a DVD, a soundtrack, Springsteen and Slipknot

 

"We've got a ton of new songs," reveals Win Butler. "We're casually playing together, working on ideas. It reminds me of when we recorder our first album [2004's The Funeral]. We couldn't really afford to make records, so we'd go in at weekends, whenever there was free time in the studio, and work on songs, and play some shows to raise some money to do a little more. It feels like we're in that frame this time. We've got a studio, and I've got a tape machine in my house. But the idea of banging out a new record is pretty far from our minds."

 

The last time Uncut caught up with Butler - in late 2007 - he was wrestling with fatigue as the gruelling, year long campaign in support of Neon Bible drew to a close. Then, he talked fondly of retreating to the splendid isolation of his Montreal home during the snow-bound winter months. All that was over a year ago, and Butler, it seems, has been a lot busier than he first planned.

 

For a start, he's been working with wife Régine Chassagne and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett (Arcade Fire's string arranger) on the soundtrack of The Box, the new film from Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly.

"I always thought that their music was inherently cinematic," says Kelly. "I felt that they could be magnificent film composers, if the timing was right and I could somehow get them interested. I met Win at the Hollywood Bowl in the summer of 2007. So I handed him a script for The Box... and about a week later he called back. They were intrigued and interested."

[ Due for release in autumn, The Box stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a married couple who are given an old wooden box with a button on it; if they press the button they recieve a large sum of money. The catch is someone they don't know will then die. ]

"Writing a film score was something Régine and I were interested in," explains Butler. "it's based on a Twilight Zone episode, and Richard wanted a Hitchcock vibe. So we got a Mellotron. We liked the idea of doing a project that is someone else's thing, as an experiment to see if we could even do it. It's very orchestral."

"It's more Nino Rota than Neon Bible," continues Pallett. "The movie is set in the '70s so the Mellotron was a good starting point. In Hollywood, every decade has a sound. We put a great deal of effort into making the recording sound like an old-school Hollywood suspense movie."

 

Not contet with working on the new Arcade Fire album and The Box, Butler also found time to play his first solo gig. His band are longterm supporters of Partners In Health, a charity dedicated to improving healtcare for the poor in Haiti, Chassagne's native country. Just before Christmas in 2008, Butler appeared at a benefit gig in LA.

"Régine was feeling really sick, and that was the first two days we've spent apart since we met," he says. "It was also the first time ever in my life I've played by myself, just an acoustic guitar. I've never been interested in being a solo artist. In high school, there was no point where the idea of not having a band to play with me appealed to me in the slightest. What's exciting to me about our band is what we're able to come up with together is so much better than what any one of us could do on our own. I'm constantly aware of that - there's so many minds working on it, thinking about it and caring about it..."

 

Meanwhile Butler has been involved in putting the finishing touches to the band's first full-lenght DVD, Miroir Noir. It ostensibly covers the arc of the band's Neon Bible campaign, but is thankfully much more than a meat-and-two-veg tour doc. Directed by Vincent Morisset, an old college friend of Chassagne, it's full of visual flourishes, mixing footage of the band recording the album in the converted church they own in Farnham, Quebec with live performances and allusive imagery that calls to mind Lost Highway -era David Lynch.

"I find live DVDs pretty boring," admits Butler. "Even the really great ones, like Stop Making Sense, are 45 minutes too long. my favourite part of every Stones documentary is the part where I get to see where the microphone is placed, because I'm a nerd in that way. Ours is probably not the most accessible film."

What Miroir Noir certainly captures succesfully is the righteous cacophony of the Arcade Fire's live shows. Armed only with two-hand-held cameras, Morisset and cameraman Vincent Moon throw themselves into the fray onstage, dodging the odd violin bow and flying drum. We also see the band busking through the crowd.

"Vincent Moon came to a show in Paris," recalls Butler. "At the end , we were playing 'In The Backseat', and we went through the crowd and outside onto the streets of Paris and kept going. Maybe only two people followed us. We walked down this long alley, and at the end there was this family eating dinner in a big picture window. It wasn't a planned thing. We just circled round this family's window while they're eating, they're like falafel guys. They had all these plans, to go to some exotic place and have us play. It didn't happen. So we played in the elevator instead."

 

One of the most intriguing elements heard through the film are the "thousands" of messages left on the answering service the band set up prior to Neon Bible's release.

"We didn't know what to expect," he laughs. "It was a serious expense! About six months into it, they were like, 'You know, guys, we're paying about 1,500 bucks a month in phone bills...' What? Just from people leaving messages, because you pay the charge on 800 numbers."

 

Some of the messages get pretty intense. One caller even goes as far as to claim "Your product gave me my life back." How does Butler respond to things like that?

"It doesn't really seem that real, It's not necessarily about us as people. What would be weird was if it was like some celebrity connection. But it doesn't really feel creepy in that way. To be honest, I don't spend a lot of every day thinking about how the music makes people feel. But it's interesting to have a window on it. I've felt that way about music before myself. I was never the type to be in a fan club, or be a superfan, but there's definitely times in your life when music is very important."

 

Which bands did you feel like that about?

"I went to boarding school for the end of high school and it was pretty lonely being away from home for the first time. And that was when I got into The Cure and New Order and stuff like that. But also Radiohead and Björk. They were the two artists making records at the time when I was the most open. I listened to Disintegration by The Cure so much that hearing it made me chuckle instead of feel depressed, and I remember thinking: 'OK, I've listened to this a lot!"

 

From listening to your heroes, to meeting them; success has ensured that Arcade Fire can now move freely in such circles themselves.

"We went to the Grammys for the first time," recalls Butler. "It was so shitty. You go to this venue, like a conference centre, at about 10am, and it's totally dry - no food, water, alcohol. Then it's two in the afternoon and we haven't eaten. Right before us was the award for Heavy Metal album. And the winner of the award that year was Slipknot. So you hear this roar behind us - "Rraaarrgghh!"- 15 guys going crazy. It takes them 10 minutes to get to the stage, they're all wearing the full regalia, the masks and everything. So their voices are all muffled, and the one guy accepts his award and he's like "Graggrrh ggrrhhllrrgghhhmm" and another one is sobbing into his mask. Then they shuffle you over to the main event. No-one's eaten all day, but now it's three in the afternoon and there's people in tuxedos in the hotdog line offering $100 for a hotdog. A total crush of humanity, trying to get hotdogs..."

"But the most positive part of all day was that, at one of the after-parties, we met Bruce Springsteen. He was really lovely. We talked to him about being married and being in a band and kids. When he was leaving, he came up to us to say goodbye and remembered our names. So in this fake, LA bullshit thing, it was a really nice moment. Then he invited us to play with him!"

 

Michael Bonner

 

Sorry for any errors, copied this by hand from the mag. (yeah i have no life) I bet somebody finds this from the internet :p

[Ziggy]

Intervention

 

I bvought "Intervention" after Will named it as worthy and becasue they are Canadian. It's on repeat on my MP3 player at the moment. I'll be getting the rest of Neon Bible asap. Great music!

(I also loved the description of Slipknot in the interview)

[MrMagpie]

Gotta love our Canadian artists!

 

And Ella, yes you have no life for typing that out :P Thanks though. :D

[yellowy eyes]

I know, right? and the first time when I had done half of it already it accidently got deleted so started over. But I like typing :P

[MrMagpie]

You should be a typewriter when you grow up. Not the person who types things, but the actual machine.

[thescientist06]

Well of course because a person who types things is called a "typist." :P

[yellowy eyes]

yeah thanks! now my future doesn't look that blurred anymore :p

[MrMagpie]

Your future is typed out in this thread.

 

 

(that was borderline marklike)

[yellowy eyes]

yeah, my future's no longer unwritten.

[deaths_friend]

Arcade Fire Live

Venue : Enmore Theatre, Sydney, Australia

Date: 23rd January 2008

Quality: Good Quality TVRip - Pro Shot

Length: 28mins

 

Setlist

Wake Up

Keep The Car Running

Laika

Well& The Lighthouse

Intervention

No Cars Go

 

Preview -

 

Download Link - http://www.megaupload.com/?d=X8T0W0EU (234MB)

[yellowy eyes]

wake up is such a classic

[ricardo]

why such a short concert?

[yellowy eyes]

thanks for the upload :)

[Bauk]

Oh nice, downloading right now!

And nice to read the interview! :)

 

I can't wait till the 3rd of april when Miroir Noir will be released here! :D

[megacity]

why such a short concert?

 

i was going to ask the same

[MrMagpie]

New documentary is streaming this week on pitchfork.

 

http://pitchfork.com/news/34996-watch-arcade-fires-imiroir-noiri-now-on-pitchforktvs-one-week-only/

[Tnspieler1012]

I was growing bored with my music supply so I went and downloaded "Funeral". Currently I'm not quite sure what I think of it. The second half is really good, but some of the neighborhood tracks and misc. others are just irritating. I had heard most of Neon Bible before and loved it, but I thought I'd risk the more acclaimed, unfamiliar one.

[ricardo]

you'll love it for sure, I mean you don't like neighborhood 1 nor 3?

[Tnspieler1012]

#1 is pretty good, But no, I'm only so-so on #3 if I remember correctly.

[ricardo]

well I don't like much neighbrohood 2 but I love the rest of the songs, rebellion is such a classic, and what about wake up, tunnels, haiti, une année sans lumiere...

(btw nice avi)

[Tnspieler1012]

Wake up is fantastic, Tunnels is Neighborhood 1, Haiti is great, Unu annee... is decent (all second impressions of course, I'm still familiarizing myself with the album)

 

and ty, its a nebula! :wideeyed: :P

[ricardo]

uhm, what do you mean by tunnels= neighborhood 1? you did not like it as the other neighborhoods?

I love the outro to une année

[Tnspieler1012]

No, I mean they are one and the same song.

 

1. "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" – 4:48
   
2. "Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)" – 3:31
   
3. "Une année sans lumière" – 3:40
   
4. "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" – 5:12
   
5. "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)" – 4:49
   
6. "Crown of Love" – 4:42
   
7. "Wake Up" – 5:35
   
8. "Haïti" – 4:07
   
9. "Rebellion (Lies)" – 5:10
   
10. "In the Backseat" – 6:20
    

[ricardo]

oh I seee :P, well it's one of my fav albums

[Corey07]

Hey, I'm looking for Arcade Fire B-sides... i can't find them anywhere, and I usually do not have to ask for songs. Could anyone upload some B-sides in the Arcade Fire uploads thread? I just love them and want all of their stuff...