Win om Merge

Merge, Arcade Fires skivbolag, fyller 20 år och därför har Pitchfork intervjuat några av deras favoritband som ligger på just Merge. Arcade Fire var givetvis ett av dem.

WIN BUTLER, ARCADE FIRE

Pitchfork: When did you first hear of Merge Records?

Win Butler: I grew up in the suburbs of Houston, and there's not a lot of independent music. [Laughs.] I went to boarding school in New England, and I definitely remember hearing Superchunk in high school. I was living in Boston, and it was the first time I had been living in a city or whatever where there was an actual college radio station that played music. Around the same time, I remember hearing Neutral Milk Hotel and the Magnetic Fields. It was one of my first experiences where it didn't seem to me that the independent thing was a production choice or, like, "We don't have money so this is how we sound" sort of thing. These songs were as good as any songs you'd ever heard. It was musically as good as anything. When we were looking for a label years later, it was really the only label I was super-interested in, so it was a dream come true.

Our drummer at the time, Howard [Bilerman], had known Mac and Laura. He used to let them crash at his place in the Superchunk days. I get the impression that he would document shows back in the day. [Ed.: Bilerman recorded Clambakes Vol. 4: Sur La Bouche: Live in Montreal 1993.]

Pitchfork: How many labels did Arcade Fire send their demo to?

WB: I don't think really anything came out of us mailing our demo to people. I remember a guy from Saddle Creek hearing the demo a year after Funeral came out. They found it in the stack, and he thought, "Oh, no, what have I done?" We played this weird show in Boston with Devendra Banhart and Xiu Xiu; this acoustic show where we happened into this opening slot. Through that, there was this label called Absolutely Kosher that we were talking to a lot. There's a local label that put out the Unicorns record, alien8, that we were talking to. We were pretty close to going with them before everything happened with Merge.

Pitchfork: How did the Merge deal finally happen?

WB: We just drove down to North Carolina. It's kind of a big decision, and we had been really close to signing to alien8, so we wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. We drove down and met everyone, and it was this kind of instant… For everyone in the band, I think, it was obvious what the right thing to do was. My understanding of how they decided to sign us was that we sent them some rough mixes of songs on Funeral while we were working on them. It didn't have anything to do with the EP. It was more like, "These are the songs we're working on now." They were playing them around the office and there were a lot of people who were really into it and pushing Mac and Laura, like, "Oh, you gotta sign these guys." It had nothing to do with any kind of hype or anything like that. It was way before any of that, and it was just a bunch of people connecting to our music. We could really tell that was the case. It was very comforting.

Pitchfork: You mentioned the groundswell of support for Funeral in the office. That must have been an encouraging sign that these people were going to work for you?

WB: It was really cool, and the other really striking about the office at Merge was that so many people we talked to that worked there had moved to Chapel Hill just hoping that they could work at Merge. They made the leap and moved there, not knowing if they would have a job or anything. [Laughs] "You know, what? I'd really like to work for Merge, so I'll move to this town and see what happens. That's part of what's really special about what Mac and Laura have created. They have made this outpost, and people from all over say, "I wonder what's happening there."

Pitchfork: Why is that? What do they have or encourage?

WB: The best analogy I can make is that Régine [Chassagne] and I were just on a trip in rural Louisiana, and we were driving between Houston and New Orleans. Down there, there are a lot of radio stations that play a lot of French-Acadian music. It would be some beautiful oldies song I'd never heard, and then slick modern country song. Then you'd listen to the lyrics, and the lyrics would actually be pretty good. Then there would be French-Acadian song, but it was still really interesting to listen to because it's an expression of someone's musical taste and their personality. You're driving through the countryside, and more radio used to be that way. It was this positive experience of the radio for the first time in a long time. That's how I see Merge: It's really just an expression of their tastes and things that they like. It permeates the company in a way.

Pitchfork: You played the Cave, the tiny underground music venue in Chapel Hill, just after Merge signed you. Do you remember that show?

WB: Of course. It was before the record had come out. That was our first real tour in the States opening for the Unicorns, which was really a great time. We wanted to play in Chapel Hill, and the Unicorns had a show in South Carolina. We booked that show at the Cave, and the Unicorns went on to South Carolina. We met up again in Atlanta or something like that.

I remember nearly hitting my head on the ceiling several times. So many times in Arcade Fire, I remember playing in Providence, R.I., and my friend Hilary and my parents showed up, and there was some old hippie couple. And we played our whole set, just like, "Oh, whatever." We'd still really bring it even if we were playing for four people. [Laughs] We were still in that mentality. We were excited to just be playing for the Merge people even though there were only probably 15-20 people there. We wanted them to see us and get what we did.

Pitchfork: And do you feel like that night accomplished that connection?

WB: Definitely. It was pretty great. And we all stayed at all people in the label's houses. There were a lot of us. I think we really connected with everyone that was working there.

Pitchfork: Two shows later in Chapel Hill (and I suppose your last show here that wasn't for Barack Obama), you thanked Christina Rentz, Merge's publicist, from the stage. Why?

WB: The whole deal really took us by surprise. In a lot of ways, it was a learning situation for all of us. On that tour, the first headlining tour, Martin and Christina-- who were setting up our interviews at that point-- it was non-stop. A cell phone would ring in the van, and we'd be driving from show to show in the van and passing the phone around the van. It was basically like one foot in front of the other. For them, it was kind of the same thing: "Holy crap, what do we do here? Let's try and figure it out." In a way, we all kind of learned and grew together and figured out what worked and what didn't work.

Pitchfork: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine people with a lot of money approached you about releasing the record after Funeral. Why stay with Merge?

WB: We were definitely approached by pretty much everyone. There was nothing that came even close. We were never that interested in leaving in the first place, but there aren't that many real labels out there. It's the same as the radio stations. There's only a handful of them still working and kicking in the spirit of how it's supposed to be. We were never tempted to leave Merge. It already worked, and we already were happy. There's a perception in a way that it's all about pushing something, but 95% of the whole process was saying, "No. No. No. No. Yes. No. No." A lot of it was trying to filter through the noise and all the chaos, and it really felt like partners in a way that we weren't going to get with another label. We were both in the same storm. When I think of a major-label situation, they're taking you out and trying to push you in all these avenues where your music wouldn't actually go. With Merge, it's very much been like we're following how people respond to the music, instead of vice versa.

Pitchfork: Articles: XX Merge

Will & Régine

En rolig och lite konstig intervju med Will och Régine från 2007.

Del 1 av 2:


Del 2 av 2:

Allt med dem känns så genuint. Det finns aldrig ett förprogrammerat svar eller sätt att agera. Älskar hur Régine blir helt till sig när Will talar om för intervjuaren att de ska se M.I.A. senare. Genuint.

Coyne äter sina anti-depressiva igen

Wayne Coyne Q&A:
He's happy about Oklahoma honor, but sad about Arcade Fire feud

May 1, 2009, 05:25 PM | by Clark Collis
Categories: Arcade Fire, Flaming Lips

Oklahoma rockers/sonic explorers The Flaming Lips are no strangers to weirdness. But even singer Wayne Coyne found the recent controversy over Lips track “Do You Realize?” becoming his state's official rock song a tad off-the-wall. “It was silly,” he tells EW. “People were talking about the fact that I used bad language. I mean, Jesus, I’m not running for office! Last time I checked, a guy in a rock band is allowed to cuss if he wants to.”

The saga began last year when folks in Oklahoma voted on what song they wanted to become their official rock anthem, and an overwhelming number plumped for “Do You Realize?” On March 2, the Flaming Lips visited the Oklahoma Senate to see that body passed the appropriate resolution. But the measure subsequently failed to get the necessary amount of support in the House of Representatives after some Republican members objected to Coyne’s potty-mouth and bassist Michael Ivins having worn a hammer and sickle t-shirt during his Senate visit.

Finally, Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry signed an executive order making “Do You Realize?” the state rock song, and did so this Tuesday at a ceremony attended by Coyne, drummer-guitarist Steven Drozd and Ivins (who sported a Ghostbusters t-shirt for the occasion). Meanwhile, Coyne instigated an unlikely feud with the Arcade Fire when he told a Rolling Stone journalist that he thought the Canadian band were “pr---s” who "treated the audience like s---.” Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler later responded on his band’s website with a message in which he hoped that he was less of "pr---" than someone who would criticize people he didn't know.

After the jump, Coyne talks about the state-song brouhaha, the Arcade Fire imbroglio, and why you should seriously consider purchasing Steven Drozd's house.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Congratulations on “Do You Realize?” becoming, finally, Oklahoma’s official rock song!
WAYNE COYNE: Well, thank you. It’s not been without it’s ups and downs.

You can’t have imagined it would become such a controversy.
No. Last month, when the first vote happened, it seemed fairly standard. Don’t get me wrong, it was absurd even then. We went to the Senate chamber and I think they were talking about stem cells. And they stopped everything and said, “We’ve got some special guests in the chamber here. Everybody welcome the Flaming Lips!” The whole thing just stopped for an hour and they voted on this thing. I figured, well, we won the vote and that’s the end of it. But, as we clearly know now, there was another vote.

At which both yourself and Michael Ivins were criticized.
I thought it was a joke. I thought, they’re really not complaining about Michael’s t-shirt! I mean, there’s plenty of things they could have complained about. They could have said, “Hey, Wayne wrote a song back in 1986 called “Jesus Shooting Heroin”! They could have said, “His Christmas on Mars movie has a marching band with giant vaginal genitals for heads.”

But you won in the end. What was the official ceremony on Tuesday like?
It was cool, uncomfortable, weird. All the things that you think talking to governors would be. I mean, he’s a very cool guy. But it is another world for me. And he declared it Flaming Lips day as part of the ceremony, which we didn’t know was going to happen.

Did any special privileges come with that? Were you allowed to molest a goat or something?
I asked the governor while we there: “Can I just go to a restaurant and get a meal for free?” I don’t think anyone really had an answer. I didn’t suggest molesting a goat.
=======================================================================
Did the Arcade Fire send a congratulatory telegram?
[Laughs] They didn’t. I wish that had never happened. I didn’t necessarily mean it about the people in the Arcade Fire. I meant it about the guys that were running their stages at a couple of festivals. I wish whatever had been said wouldn’t have been taken as such a defiant statement from the Flaming Lips, because it wasn’t. I just assumed [their response] was a joke.

Really? He seemed pretty annoyed to me.
I can totally see that now.

Would you care to apologize to them now?
I would. I really feel bad about it. I like enough of their music. The idea that I’m somehow against them… I’m not!
=======================================================================
What’s the word on the new album? Last time we spoke you said you’d been working on some material that sounded like “John Lennon meets Miles Davis and they discover some supercomputer from the future.”
I think we’ve stayed true to that. Some of it reminds me a lot of the “Bitches Brew” period when Chick Corea and John McLaughlin and that series of more freaky electronic players were all having their heyday with Miles Davis. I wouldn’t say it sounds like jazz, but it sounds freaky and unrestricted. We had initially thought it would be out maybe in July. But now I think it’ll be more like September. We've got a name: Embryonic. At least that's what we're calling it at the moment. We’ve been recording at Steven’s empty, unsold old house. He put his house up on the market last summer and it’s still empty.

So, if a Flaming Lips fan were to buy Steven’s house next week, would they get the band thrown in as well until you’d finished the album?
We have thought about this. If someone bought it we’d say, "Well, you can’t move in for at least a couple of weeks." People locally do know that we’re recording there. I’ve talked to quite a few musicians who have gone to an open-house day and looked around and said, “Oh, this is where they’re doing their new record.”

Are you recording on open-house days? I always thought the advice for house sellers was to fill the house with the smell of baking bread, not the sound of the Flaming Lips jamming.
No, we stick all the stuff in the garage and it looks like a fairly normal, empty house. There is one room that has recording equipment but I think people just picture their bed and their night dresser being in there. It’s a beautiful house! Even if there’s some leftover junk from our session it would still seem very buyable!

Entertainment Weekly: Wayne Coyne Q&A

Win intervjuad i Stockholm

En intervju Win gjorde för Revolver när Arcade Fire var här i Sverige för första gången 2005.

Styrda av musiken

Egentligen har The Arcade Fire blivit precis tvärtemot vad Win Butler hade tänkt sig. Skivan säljer lika bra som dåliga skivor, publiken ropar in dem när de spelar som sämst, och låtarna skriver sig själva.

Text & Foto: Christoffer Kittel Pressbild: Rough Trade Records

- Lou Reed skriver låtar om heroin, Bruce Springsteen skriver låtar om bilar och att sticka från stan. Olika människor dras till olika saker. Men det finns ju inte så många rocklåtar som handlar om föräldrar. Det är nog inte det coolaste av teman inom rocken.

Win Butler sitter vid ett ostämt piano och reflekterar över The Arcade Fire. När han startade bandet trodde han att han visste vad han ville göra. Men det visade sig ganska snabbt att det här med kontroll över musiken är någonting väldigt svårt.
- Jag tror inte att man rationellt kan välja sina influenser, jag tror att saker och ting gör intryck på en och påverkar en och det kommer fram när man spelar. Så vi försöker fokusera på att skriva låtar och sen vara lyhörda till vad låtarna vill att vi ska göra. Sångerna dikterar vilka svängar de ska ta.

Alla som har hört gruppens debutalbum 'Funeral' vet vad Win pratar om. Skivan är ett smärre kaos av dramatiska kast, känslomässiga crescendon och irrationellt svängiga blödningar. Den flitige kan spåra en uppsjö av musikaliska influenser, från Talking Heads, Bowie och Roxy Music via Cure och Bunnymen ut till Jaques Brel och Woody Guthries fingerspetsar. Varje låt är en egen värld, som i sig ofta består av flera olika stämningar, som växlas över i otroligt snygga vändningar. När man lyssnar på 'Funeral' förstår man att det handlar om liv och död för Win Butler och hans musikaliska tillika romantiska partner, Régine Chassagne.

Var kommer dramatiken ifrån?
- Musik för mig är ett sätt att uttrycka saker som man känner och tänker på. Och relationer är väl sånt som vi har funderat mycket på de senaste åren. Alla låtar handlar ju inte om det, men det har varit lite av ett tema under en period. En låt som 'Power out', som tar en ganska skarp kurva i slutet – i slutet av en låt handlar det om att det inte finns ord att beskriva mer, så vi var liksom tvungna att hitta något annat sätt att ta låten till ett nytt ställe, för låten försöker uttrycka något som blir så tungt på slutet. Men det var inte så att vi sa "det vore coolt att slänga in ett diskobeat här", utan mer att vi från låtens perspektiv kände att vi ville vända oss i den riktningen. Det är en nyansskillnad, men det är så jag relaterar till det hela.

'Funeral' heter som den gör främst för att bandet under inspelningen upplevde flera dödsfall inom släkten. Win och trummisen Will är bröder, så det fanns en hel del gemensam sorg i bandet. Att det blev skivans tema var dock inte en självklarhet.
- Det var ju inte så att vi skrev låtarna om den död som kom. De begravningar som inföll under den tiden handlade ju mycket om en mötesplats för familj och vänner, och eftersom skivan handlade mycket om sådana relationer så blev det mer att vi filtrerade ner de känslorna och stämningarna i musiken. Det påverkade absolut musiken, men jag tror att det framförallt gjorde oss uppmärksamma på det temat som skivan redan hade, snarare än att inspirera själva låtskrivandet.

Det dramatiska uttrycket måste vara ganska utmattande.
- För mig är det vad låten handlar om som avgör min sånginsats. Ta en kille som David Lynch. Han har gjort filmen 'Blue Velvet', som handlar om en konstig undre värld och en uppfuckad småstad, en film med en skruvad syn på sexualitet och ett väldigt komplext tilltal. Sen gör han 'The Straight story', som handlar om en 90-årig gubbe som åker hundratals mil på sin traktor. Skådisen i den filmen måste gestalta sin roll väldigt torrt, väldigt emotionellt reserverat. Det är ganska stor skillnad i dynamiken mellan de två. Och det är ungefär samma i min musik. Jag vill inte ta in mina förutsättningar i låten. Om jag är uppe i varv vill jag inte att det nödvändigtvis ska komma med i en låt. Jag vill hellre att en låt som är dramatisk ska kräva det av mig när jag spelar in den.

Ingen Montreal-scen
Det senaste åren har varit lite av ett genombrott för kanadensisk indiemusik, både i Europa och USA. Band som The Arcade Fire, The Hidden Cameras, Broken Social Scene, Black Mountain, The Unicorns och Wolf Parade klumpas lätt ihop till en kanadensisk indiescen, trots landets storlek. Men faktum är att de flesta av dem har olika kontakter med varandra.
- Vår violinist spelar med The Hidden Cameras också. Och vi har delat medlemmar med The Unicorns, innan de splittrades. Det är lite som att vi blir vänner eftersom vi har hört talas om varandra, och gillar det de andra gör.

Flera av banden kommer från Montreal. Eller kommer från förresten. Win Butler kommer från Texas, och det är egentligen bara Régine Chassagne som är kanadensare. Men Montreal tycks vara en bra stad för indiemusik, och bandet bor där. Men Win ser egentligen bara faror med att det blir en "indiescen" i Montreal.
- Jag ser en potential för massor av skitdåliga band som blir signade bara för att någon ser en "musikscen" i Montreal och försöker göra business på det. Montreal kan bli det nya Seattle, vilket i praktiken bara betyder att en massa dåliga band kommer att få skivkontrakt. Det funkar liksom inte så, att en stad är het. Det handlar snarare om att folk i städer gör saker. Jag tror att folk missuppfattar hur det går till. Allting går i vågor. Cleveland kommer att ha en schysst musikscen någon gång, Oklahoma är en så miserabel stad att den är dömd till att föda en bra hiphopscen förr eller senare. Man kan aldrig veta.

Win ser också faror med att bli alltför involverad med andra musiker och bilda "kollektiv". Främst för att man riskerar att få en stämpel som är svår att bli av med. Det var en av de främsta anledningarna till att bandet valde att signa med Merge Records när det visade sig att de var intresserade.
- När vi hade träffats var det uppenbart. Vi var på exakt samma nivå. Merge är ett skivbolag med en bra storlek, vi skulle få ut skivan i en bredare krets, men inte riskera att bli kategoriserade, för de har ett väldigt brett utbud. Constellation är ett jättebra bolag, men det blir lätt "jaha, ännu ett postrockalbum" eller "ännu ett Constellation-band", jag tycker inte att det är så på Merge, de har lyckats undvika det.

En annan viktig anledning var Magnetic Fields, som låg på Merge tidigare. När Arcade Fire var och spelade på radiostationen KCRW:s liveprogram "Morning becomes Eclectic" berättade Win om när han jobbade i en skoaffär i Boston och en låt plötsligt spelades på radion. "Vad i helvete är det här, det är helt fantastiskt" tänkte Win, som började ringa in till radion och önska låten, "Born on a Train", hela tiden.
- När jag hörde dem vändes allt uppochner. Jag ville inte kopiera deras stil, men som låtskrivare tänkte jag "wow, man kan göra melodier som är så direkta". Det är så melodiskt starka låtar, på många inspelningar vilar hela låten på enbart melodin, det är väldigt häftigt. Det är nästan en Pet Shop Boys-approach.

Spelade med David Byrne
Win klinkar på pianot som står i hallen på hotellet i Stockholm där vi träffas. Han spelar det stillsamma pianopartiet i 'Vampire/Forest fire', och trots att det gamla pianot ger ifrån sig skeva och trasiga toner låter det makalöst vackert. Låten finns på bandets demo-ep från 2003, som är en riktig guldklimp, trots sin begränsade inspelningskvalitet. Dramatiken fanns redan då, om än paketerad i en något annorlunda kostym. Men det är ändå 'Funeral' räknas som den riktiga debuten. Den släpptes redan förra året i USA, där den har fått ett smått fantastiskt mottagande.
- Det har gått förvånansvärt bra, jag tror att 'Funeral' är Merges mest framgångsrika skiva hittills. Jag hade inga stora förhoppningar. Snarare blev jag lite orolig när den började sälja så bra. "Vad har jag gjort för fel?" tänkte jag, för de flesta skivor som jag gillar har ju sålt skitdåligt när de kommit. Jag läste en tidning som hade recenserat David Bowies 'Low' och skrev att den var skräp. Det brukar betyda att man är på rätt spår…

Just Bowie är en av de referenser som tycks ha färgat bandets musik en hel del. En annan är Talking Heads, och Arcade Fire brukar spela deras 'This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)' på sina konserter. Senast de var i New York fick de sällskap på scen av självaste David Byrne, som hjälpte till att tolka sin egen låt.
- Det var väldigt speciellt. Han hade varit på en show i New York, och han mailade och frågade om han fick komma på vår spelning när vi kom nästa gång. Han visste att vi gjorde en cover på en Talking Heads-låt, så vi bjöd in honom på soundcheck, och så bara körde vi. Det funkade skitbra. Han är en fantastisk sångare. Till och med hans grejer numera är fortfarande väldigt utmanande och annorlunda, jag gillar honom verkligen som artist.

Hur är det att förmedla ert musikaliska uttryck på scen?
- Vi har spelat låtarna ganska länge, så vi gillar att ändra i dem. Vi är inte rädda för energiska urladdningar. Kaos är oftast de bästa ögonblicken.

Blir ni inte väldigt beroende av publiken?
- Det beror på. Man kan slåss med publiken, eller så kan publiken bidra med någonting, som energi. Ibland känns det som om publiken bestämt sig för kvällens humör innan man ens dykt upp, så känns det åtminstone. Inte så att vad vi gör på scenen inte har någon påverkan, men nästan ofelbart har vi blivit dubbelt inropade när vi har spelat våra sämsta gig. Det har hänt fyra gånger under den här turnén, vi går av och säger "shit, vi stank" samtidigt som publiken ropar sig hesa.

- Howard, vår inspelningsledare, berättade att han var och såg Queen i Montreal när han var fjorton, och det var den bästa spelningen han någonsin varit på. Sen när han var tjugo satt han och kollade på teve och såg en spelning med Queen som var riktigt usel, med skräpigt ljud och helt och hållet värdelöst. Så visade det sig att det var samma spelning som han hade sett som barn. Jag tror att det faktiskt var en fantastisk show. Men det är inte alltid konsertens själ fastnar på film eller band.

Publicerad 14 mars 2005

Orginalartikeln

Clash listar Funeral som #1

Musikmagasinet Clash har listat de enligt dem 50 bästa skivorna som getts ut under deras livstid. Några klockrena val och några väldigt konstiga val. Som alltid med sådan här listor.

50: The Killers, ‘Hot Fuss’
49: Kasabian, ‘Kasabian’
48: Deerhunter, ‘Microcastle’
47: Bat For Lashes, ‘Fur and Gold’
46: Vampire Weekend, ‘Vampire Weekend’
45: MGMT, ‘Oracular Spectacular’
44: Portishead, ‘Third’
43: Elbow, ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’
42: Amy Winehouse, ‘Back To Black’
41: Santigold, ‘Santigold’
40: Late Of The Pier, ‘Fantasy Black Channel’
39: Sigur Rós, ‘Takk…’
38: Efterklang, ‘Parades’
37: Liars, ‘Drum’s Not Dead’
36: The White Stripes, ‘Get Behind Me Satan’
35: Hot Chip, ‘The Warning’
34: Fleet Foxes, ‘Fleet Foxes’
33: Benga, ‘Diary Of An Afro Warrior’
32: Feist, ‘The Reminder’
31: Broadcast, ‘Tender Buttons’
30: Battles, ‘Mirrored’
29: Klaxons, ‘Myths Of The Near Future’
28: Tunng, ‘Mother’s Daughter And Other Songs’
27: The Libertines, ‘The Libertines’
26: Kanye West, ‘The College Dropout’
25: Apparat, ‘Walls’
24: Burial, ‘Burial’
23: Gallows, ‘Orchestra Of Wolves’
22: Caribou, ‘The Milk Of Human Kindness’
21: Broken Social Scene, ‘Broken Social Scene’
20: Sufjan Stevens, ‘Illinois’
19: Soulwax, ‘Nite Versions’
18: The Bug, ‘London Zoo’
17: Brian Wilson, ‘SMiLE’
16: Isolée, ‘We Are Monster’
15: My Morning Jacket, ‘Z’
14: Franz Ferdinand, ‘Franz Ferdinand’
13: Joanna Newsom, ‘Ys’
12: Modeselektor, ‘Hello Mom!’
11: Bloc Party, ‘Silent Alarm’
10: Animal Collective, 'Merriweather Post Pavilion'
9: J Dilla, ‘Donuts’
8: Arctic Monkeys, ‘Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’
7: M.I.A., ‘Arular’
6: LCD Soundsystem, ‘LCD Soundsystem’
5: The Knife, ‘Silent Shout’
4: TV On The Radio, ‘Return To Cookie Mountain’
3: Kings Of Leon, ‘Because Of The Times’
2: Radiohead, ‘In Rainbows’
1: Arcade Fire, ‘Funeral’

Kan väl inte säga att jag och överens med dem med många album men plats nummer ett har de ju i alla fall lyckats med som ni ser. Såhär lyder deras artikel där även en intervju med Win finns med.

1
Arcade Fire, ‘Funeral'
(2004; Merge/Rough Trade)

It’s rare indeed to remember the first time you ever heard a record, or a band, yet I recall clearly where and when I first heard ‘Funeral’ and its makers, Canadian collective Arcade Fire.

Well, ‘when’ is a little sketchy – half time during some football match or other, back when Southampton were in the top flight – but the ‘where’ was at a promoter friend’s house in north London. As the game we were watching reached its midway mark, he slipped a CD he’d recently received into the stereo and asked for my opinion; presumably he’d been sent the album by somebody looking for shows. I didn’t know what to say about the album, or at least the fifteen minutes I took in while he made tea, busying himself in the kitchen, leaving me alone with music unlike anything I’d ever previously come across. I think I may have offered: “It sounds a little French”.

What I said – most likely little more than a grunt of appreciation, my outward attentions turning back to the kicking at hand – and what I quite immediately felt were different things entirely. After all, it’s not typical to gush forth adoration when it’s based solely on a snippet, a sneak peek at something far grander. Yet the impact was immediate: ‘Funeral’, even only quarter of an hour of it, sounded like a classic from its very first airing. As soon as the piano notes fall like a gentle rain on a glistening pond – your toes dipped in it, of course – a connection is made; when Win Butler begins his vocals, they come on slow, but after only thirty or forty seconds already something’s stirring in the album’s opener, ‘Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)’, which telegraphs the build to a sensation within you that just can’t be beaten. That tingle, a shot of electricity; a charge brought on by the investing in an art most ambrosial.

The song immediately paints its makers as outsiders, with lyricism of being cut off from the world, but getting by through love for a chosen few over association with a great many – “Since there’s no-one else around, we let our hair grow long and forget all we used to know”. The album’s title, arrived at after band members suffered family losses during the record’s gestation period, is absolutely suggestive of an overall tone – melancholic, but celebratory too, as all passings lead to a coming together of parted souls for a session of remembrance. Even in the darkness, there is hope, as ‘Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)’ sings crisply: “I went out into the night, I went out to find some light”. The song’s one of the album’s best-known tracks due to its ubiquitous presence on indie-disco dancefloors (alongside the equally exhilarating ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ and ‘Wake Up’), its underlying moroseness – “kids are dyin’ out in the snow!” – masked to an extent by some pounding, New Order-like bass and percussion. It matters not if you chose to ignore its lyrical tale – dance and you interact, physical expression over cerebral interface. And interaction is what’s key.

Win Butler’s delivery was heard by some to be imperfect, and the man’s not the most naturally gifted singer, that’s for sure. But what he lacks in note-hitting accuracy, he makes up for with a sublime sincerity of tone that assures the listener that he has invested every cell of his heart in this recording. Reviewers at the time took to calling ‘Funeral’ life-affirming, emotionally rich, and an album of true empowerment; (almost) all were bowled over by its tapestry of neatly weaved musicianship – strings are utilised well, never turning songs into anything too slushy, and the core collective employ organs, guitars and accordion well across the album – and addictive play-again qualities. Once through ‘Funeral’ is an absorbing listen, but play it twice, or even three times on the bounce, and every session will reveal something you missed previously – it’s that detailed a record, rich in depth and stirring of soulful intent.

“Sounds a little French” – quite the underselling of an album so very sumptuous, so delectable of engrossing narrative and enveloping sounds, that five years on it can be regarded as not simply one of the very best albums of Clash’s lifetime, but the best. (Although it should be noted that some lyrics are, indeed, in French.) At the end of every office argument over this list, ‘Funeral’ always emerged at the top of the pile; nobody could agree on a record to trump it. It crosses demographics, appealing to a broad array of audiences; it is indie and yet not, pop and eccentric and experimental and beautiful. It is everything a number one album should be – not in the charts, but in our hearts. And it sets its stall up there from its very first few second.

Frankly, if you don’t own this album (and love, and cherish it), you quite probably don’t deserve to have any music in your life whatsoever.

Bonus interview: Win Butler speaks to Clash about ‘Funeral’…

Why was the album titled ‘Funeral’?
As we were finishing the record my grandpa Alvino [Rey, a famous US swing-era musician] passed away. He led a big band and he was just the coolest old guy. He was 95 years old and he still recorded himself in his basement. He had a PalmPilot and e-mail, and Régine had gotten to play with him before… he was just this really beautiful guy. So we drove out through the desert to San Francisco to go do a memorial service for him where he grew up. There were all these people there, family members and friends and stuff. It was a meeting place for people… I kind of describe it as the meeting place for the songs.

Where did you record the album, and over what period?
We made an EP in 2002, right as the previous line-up of the band was falling apart… There was a period when we didn’t have a drummer, and we were just rehearsing a lot in mine and Régine’s house in Montreal. I think it was in that period of drummerless wilderness when we ended up writing a lot of the songs, ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Power Out’ being two of the first. So we went into the Hotel2Tango recording studio in Montreal [in 2003] to do a 7” split A-side with ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Power Out’, and our friend Arlen [Thompson], who plays in Wolf Parade, played drums on ‘Wake Up’ and then Régine played drums on ‘Power Out’. The guy who recorded us was Howard Bilerman, who was this amazing engineer who ran the Hotel. He liked the music and he had played drums when he was younger and he was like, ‘I’ll be your drummer’. We were able to raise small amounts playing shows to pay for the studio time, and Howard graciously deferred what we would normally have to be paying the engineer until we had a bit more money. He kind of made it financially possible for us to do it.

How did you fit into the Montreal scene at the time?
We were the only band playing pop music as far as I could tell, or at least the only band that thought of ourselves as wanting to write songs… It didn’t feel like we were musically related to what was going on in Montreal, but I do think that it was a blessing to be there because there was a real spirit of independence in the city… I would say that, if anything, the city inspired us to go our own way with the album and not really worry about the outside world too much.

The album creates some striking images: snow-covered neighbourhoods, a world underneath the bed covers. How did those appear?
I think a lot of the time it just starts with a feeling, and the world that you create in the lyrics is a way of trying to make that feeling real. It’s about trying to communicate that kind of spark that you initially have, that makes you want to make music in the first place. For me everything - whether it’s an arrangement or the lyrics or the idea of the song - is trying to hold up that central spark.

Can you remember where that spark originated?
I went to a boarding school and I had this English professor who was an old beatnik guy who hung out with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Borges, and he was like the most amazing dude. I remember him showing us Brazil and Blade Runner in class, this kind of science fiction stuff, and aged 15 I couldn’t really take it all in. That was around the time that I first got into Radiohead and then kind of discovered bands like The Smiths and The Cure. That’s when I first started playing cover songs with my friends and writing on my four-track and really, musically, when I first started to do what I do now.

Which track on the album still has the most meaning for you?
It’s tough if you don’t speak French but, to me, the lyrics of ‘Haïti’ are one of the best things Régine and I ever did. That kind of chokes me up when I hear it.

What are your five favourite albums from the last five years?
Wolf Parade’s ‘Apologies To The Queen Mary’; LCD Soundsystem’s ‘Sound Of Silver’; Jay Reatard’s ‘Blood Visions’; Cass McCombs’ ‘A’; and Portishead’s ‘Third’.

Clash Essential 50 - Number 1

Intervjudags med Win

En bra artikel och intervju om Miroir Noir där Win som vanligt har några sådana där självklart sanna, klarsynta och kloka svar. Ni kan ju om ni vill gissa vilken mening jag framförallt tänker på medan ni läser den. Svar utlovas efter artikelns slut.

Eternal night of Arcade Fire
Documentary Miroir Noir is arty, spooky, innovative and exhilarating
T’Cha Dunlevy, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, March 27, 2009

I arrived at Arcade Fire's new "office" on Ontario St. E. in mid-March to find Win Butler and Vincent Morisset playing Ping-Pong.

The cozy fourth-floor loft was vacant except for the game table – these guys have their priorities in order – and a small sitting area with a couch and a couple of chairs. Sunlight streamed into the room via three walls of windows.

In many ways, the scene was the diametric opposite to the setting for the internationally renowned Montreal rock band's stark new concert film, Miroir Noir.

Directed by Morisset, the 76-minute documetary follows the group on tour for its 2007 sophomore album, Neon Bible. It takes place in what feels like eternal night. Arty, spooky, silly, innovative and ultimately exhilarating, it's an unconventional rock-doc tailored to reflect the unique universe of one of the planet's most exciting music acts.

And yet, as made clear by Morisset and Butler during a one-hour interview with the Gazette, there were no grandiose aspirations. They started the project knowing what they didn't want more than what they wanted.

"We knew we didn't just want to make a Live From Paris-style film," said Butler, the band's leader and main songwriter along with wife Régine Chassagne. "I just don't find them that interesting. Even my favourite concert films, I can skip three-quarters of them, usually."

Morisset concurred: "I'm not a fan either of rock documentaries. That was the beginning point. ‘We know what we don't like, what we find really boring. Let's start from that, and try to capture the things ... those little parts we like.' ''

Miroir Noir is filled with "little parts," scattered snapshots of the band on stage in front of thousands of people, behind-the-scenes rehearsing, recording, goofing around, performing their striking songs in odd locales (often with no one else around). The segments are interspersed with disembodied voice messages left by fans calling the 1-800 number the group set up for Neon Bible as part of the album's playfully mysterious, viral promotional campaign (which included a strange, staged YouTube video and a Neon Bible website).

"It's something that evolved," said Morisset, who conceived the site with the group. "At one point, we thought of using the the phone messages as a link, un fil conducteur, but it wasn't planned at the beginning. We didn't know what to do with (the messages) – we put a bit on the website. It's something that built up progressively and organically."

The recordings range from a woman talking about her soon-to-be-5-year-old daughter's infatuation with the band to existential queries, a non-fan's spiteful rant and another's knowing indulgence ("Hello, Neon Bible head office"), tying the film together with a surreal combination of post-millennial tension and unexpected intimacy.

A graduate of UQAM's multimedia program, Morisset is not a fan of traditional narrative structures.

"I didn't want something chronological or linear," he said. "I'm more into interactive. Linearity is not something I'm comfortable with in the first place. For us, it was (about) putting together pieces, making connections between energy or vibes or songs – from testimonies or random stuff the band shot in (their Eastern Townships recording studio) La Petite Eglise. There's a narrative, but it's more about concept, ideas and mood – and the songs, because it's still music, and music is more interesting for me than the talk."

There is a notable absence of interviews in the film. Despite Morisset's familiarity with the band members – he has followed the group since its beginnings, and helped out with projections on tour for Arcade Fire's 2004 debut Funeral – there are no sit-down chats with Butler or others about the deeper meaning of the band's music.

"When I watch rock movies," he said, "the talking head thing – I much prefer to read interviews than watch half a movie of faces."

"We tried to film some interview stuff," Butler explained, "but you never really want to do it. It's always really last minute, and just kind of bla-ba-di-bla-bla. People are interested in our band 'cause we play songs, not because we talk about our songs really good."

Artistic flourishes notwithstanding, music takes centre stage in Miroir Noir. Shot largely in black and white by Parisian filmmaker Vincent Moon (who has gained acclaim for his Concerts à emporter series), songs are presented in a range of interesting settings.

Stoic hymn Wake Up is performed by the band in the thick of a large crowd; Black Mirror brims with intensity through straightforward images of the group onstage; Intervention is rendered, karaoke-style (complete with moving dot) with band members standing stonefaced in front of an abandoned theme park castle; Neon Bible is played unplugged, with the whole group squished into an elevator; Butler and Chassagne also choose an elevator for a memorable rendition of Windowsill, reprised by Butler at film's end from the backseat of a car; and rousing anthems Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) and Rebellion (Lies) are performed before an immense arena audience in the film's climactic finale. Throughout, Moon's cinematography helps bring the music to life, adding a sense of mischief and excitement at every turn.

"He's very good about getting in there," Butler said. "Onstage a lot, you forget he's there. He's diving around – on the camera audio, you can hear him going ‘La-la-la!' ''

"We were together most of the time," Morisset said, "but he's so much (of a) better cameraman than I. He has a talent for capturing stuff, going for it. Also, the band was giving us access to the stage all the time, so we were able to go wherever."

Standouts among the memorable camera angles include a shot from behind drummer Jeremy Gara's kit during Intervention, another of Butler walking through a huge cheering crowd between songs, and of audience members singing along during Power Out.

Reflecting on why the band was intent on presenting its songs in such an array of ways, Butler drew a connection to the group's roots, to a time when nothing was taken for granted and intensity was everything.

"That whole idea is true to the very origins of the band," he said. "We played a lot (of small shows) in the early days. I remember playing Brantford (Ont.) to 10 kids ... and you feel like you're going to throw up when you're done ... We're constantly trying to find ways to find that original spark of why we started doing it in the first place."

Notoriously media-shy, Arcade Fire goes to great lengths to avoid getting caught up in the music industry rigamarole. Coming off a year-long hiatus (which has found Butler playing a lot of basketball, among other things), the group has recharged its batteries. While he won't go into detail (prior to our meeting, a publicist asked that the interview be only about the new film), Butler and his bandmates are ready to get to work on the next project.

"I don't really want to talk about it," he said, "but we feel really creative right now. We're in a really good space as a band. This last year was the first break we've had in five years. Everyone feels really rejuvenated and excited. I'm happy to play music."

The Texas-born Butler is also happy to see Barack Obama in the White House. Arcade Fire played several benefits and rallies during the president's campaign, even performing at the Obama Staff Ball in January, alongside American rap star Jay-Z.

"Just before I came here, I was watching Barack talk," Butler said. "He was going out to do a town-hall meeting in California. As insane as the stuff we're facing is right now, I'm just so glad that there's a smart person in charge."

Butler is not so foolish as to think the world's troubles are over, and he won't say how the new political climate might affect Arcade Fire's next album. Funeral was marked by a sense of urgency and escapism; inspired by world events, Neon Bible was a very dark album – hence Miroir Noir's sombre tone.

"I wanted to relate to the Neon Bible era," Morisset said.

"We can be hard to pin down," Butler admitted. "We tried to finish other film projects before, and always failed. The great success (of this film) is that we finished it. I'm happy with it. I think it's interesting, and I think it's true to the band, which is the main goal."

But it's not meant to be taken totally seriously. There are moments of levity and romance throughout the movie, which begins with the band members lying down and closing their eyes in a failed hypnosis experiment, and ends with everyone waking up, as if from a dream. In between, there is music, magic and sprinklings of Lynchian drama.

"We're definitely a bunch of jokers, compared to our image," Butler said. "I think that comes through in the movie ... Shit is dark, but that doesn't mean you can't make fart jokes."

Miroir Noir – Neon Bible Archives premieres Thursday at 8:30 p.m. at Le National, 1220 Ste. Catherine St. E. Tickets cost $12.50. Call 514-845-2014 or 514-529-5000. The DVD is in stores April 7. The film can also be purchased online at www.miroir-noir.com For more info, see www.myspace.com/arcadefireofficial or www.arcadefire.com or www.arcadefire.net

www.nationalpost.com

Så vilken var då den där meningen jag tänkte på i inledningen av detta inlägg? Det var "People are interested in our band 'cause we play songs, not because we talk about our songs really good". Så otroligt enkelt och sant.

UNCUT - hela artikeln

Lovade ju att återkomma med hela artikeln i UNCUT Magazine om jag fick tag på den. Win var intervjuoffret och såhär någonting lyder den.

WHAT WIN BUTLER SAW

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

"We've got a lot of new songs" reveals Win Butler. "We're casually playing together, working on our ideas. It reminds me of when we recorded our first album [2004's 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 record is pretty far from all of 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 their music was inherently cinematic,” says Kelly. “I felt that they could be magnificent film composers, if the timing was right and if 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 me 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 receive a large sum of money. The catch is someone they don’t know will 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 somebody else’s thing, as an experiment to see if we could even do it. It’s very orchestral.”

“It’s more Nina 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 good deal of effort into making this sound like an old-school Hollywood suspense movie.”

Not content with working on the new Arcade Fire album and The Box, Butler also found time to play his first solo gig. His band are long time supporters of Partners in Health, a charity dedicated to improving healthcare 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 that 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, caring about it…”

Meanwhile, Butler has been involved in putting the finishing touches to the band’s first full length 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 Morrisset, 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 when 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 does successfully is captures 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 this big picture window. It wasn’t a planned thing. We just circled around this family’s window while they’re eating, they’re like the 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 throughout 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 charges on 800 numbers.”

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

“It doesn’t necessarily seem that real. It’s not necessarily about us as people. What would be weird is 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 that way about?

“I went to a boarding school for the end of high school, and it was pretty lonely being away from home for the first time. That was when I got into The Cure and New Order and stuff like that. But also Radiohead and Bjork. 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 10 am. 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. So you hear this roar behind us – “Rraaaarrgghh!” – 15 guys going crazy. It takes them a full ten 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 ggrrhhll rrgghhmmm,” and another one is sobbing into his mask. Then they shuffle you over to the main event. No-one’s eaten all day, by 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 that 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!

Miroir Noir is available to download from http://www.miroir-noir.com; the DVD is released January 31st.

Det sista där med att DVDn redan skulle ha släppts ska ni ta med en rejäl skopa salt. Helt felaktigt. Kommer att skeppas iväg någon gång under mars månad om ni förbeställt den.
Ha en skön helg allesammans!

Intervju med Win i UNCUT

Musikmagasinet UNCUT har fått tag på Win och följaktligen pratat lite med honom om bl.a. arbetet med soundtracket till The Box och att möta Bruce Springsteen. Här är ett utdrag/sammanfattning av intervjun.

Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler revealed he had a "horrifying experience" when he went to the Grammys.

The 28-year-old told Uncut magazine the lack of food and drink at the ceremony led to a "s****y" time.

Win, whose real name is Edwin Farnham Butler III, said: "We went to the Grammys for the first time, it was so s****y. You go to this venue, like a conference centre, at about 10 in the morning, and it's totally dry - no food, water, alcohol. Then it's two in the afternoon and we haven't eaten."

Texas-raised Win said he and his bandmates had to watch Slipknot win the award for Heavy Metal Album and was amused to see one band memer, in usual full costume and mask, make an acceptance speech which went: "Grraggrrrh ggrrhhll rrrgghhhmmm."

He continued: "Then they shuffle you over to the main event, at the Staple Center. No one's eaten all day, by now it's three in the afternoon and there's people in tuxedos in the hotdog line offering 100 dollars for a hotdog. It's this total crush of humanity trying to get hotdogs. It was a horrifying experience."

Win also said he has "never been interested in being a solo artist" and is not planning to leave Arcade Fire in the near future.

Win avslöjade också att de skrivit "tonvis av nytt material". Låter ju onekligen mycket bra! Om jag får tag på hela intervjun kommer den givetvis dyka upp här så snabbt som möjligt.

Hur grym är inte den där N.A.S.A.-skivan förresten och appråpå grym, hur besviken blev man inte på Wild Lights skiva. Tråkigt.

Win, Régine & Owen gör musiken till 'The Box'!!

Inte så mycket och orda om. Läs istället bara den här intervjun med Win Butler (WB), gjord av Pitchfork.

Arcade Fire's Butler Talks Miroir Noir, The Box Score
"It's been super healthy for us to just stay at home, tend our gardens, and actually have a real life."

Pitchfork: Miroir Noir isn't a typical concert film. It doesn't capture a complete show or contain any sort of narrative, instead stringing together bits and pieces of performance and behind-the-scenes footage with all kinds of arty miscellany. Why did you choose to create the film this way?

Win Butler: I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well. We were just trying to pick some bits of the live show. [Directors] Vincent Moon and Vincent Morisset were the only people really filming, so a lot of it was one-camera shoots, so the bits that were the most interesting are the ones we used.

Pitchfork: There are very few full songs in the film. Was that just the way the footage turned out?

WB: Not necessarily. That just wasn't what we were going for with the film. We were more into trying to capture a little bit of the energy. I find that if there are too many full performances, it doesn't really do that good a job of capturing the energy of the show.

Pitchfork: The film certainly captures that energy, but it can be frustrating when a song starts or stops in the middle.

WB: I know what you're saying. It just really wasn't what we were going for. I think, sometimes, it's better to be a little frustrated than to be bored.

Pitchfork: Miroir Noir features a lot of footage of the recording sessions for Neon Bible. Why did you include that in the film?

WB: There's a lot of home movies from when we were making the record. The parts, like, in the Rolling Stone documentaries, the only parts that I really like are the parts where you see a microphone in the background, and you're like "Ooh, that's where the microphone was." I'm kind of a nerd in that way, I guess. Those are the only moments I ever really find exciting.

Pitchfork: There are also quite a few voice-overs throughout the film-- these are voicemails left by people who called the Neon Bible promotional hotline 1-800-NEONBIBLE, right?

WB: Yeah. There were thousands and thousands of them. We checked the phone bill about six months in. It was pretty staggering, the amount we were paying.

Pitchfork: What are the extras on the deluxe edition of the Miroir Noir DVD? The press release mentioned that the DVD would include your "Friday Night With Jonathon Ross" and "Saturday Night Live" performances.

WB: Yeah. There's a BBC in-studio thing that we did with a bunch of full versions of songs that we shot at Maida Vale studio. The BBC always does a really good job, there's actual audio engineers. They actually really know what they're doing on the sound front. There's also this kind of infomercial thing that one of my good friends, Josh, made for us, that's pretty funny. It's kind of a video form of the 800 number. There's a longer clip of when [Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalists] Tim [Kingsbury] and and Richie [Reed Parry] went to "The Price Is Right". Our manager deserves a lot of credit for clearing that one. It blew my mind that he could actually get it cleared.

Pitchfork: So what's next for the Arcade Fire? We've heard you're working on a new album.

WB: Basically, the last five years have been pretty insane for the band. When we were recording [2004 debut album] Funeral, we didn't have a record deal or anything. We just kinda went in to make a 7" at the beginning. We recorded "Wake Up" and "Power Out" and the rest of it, we would kind of raise a bit of money and record. We never had a rehearsal schedule or anything, people would just come over to me and [Butler's wife and Arcade Fire co-founder] Régine's [Chassagne] house and we'd play in small groups and work on arrangements. I think our goal this year was to take enough time off that we would actually start playing together again because we were really dying to play together again. It's been pretty cool, the past couple months, the guys have been coming over to me and Régine's place. We have instruments in the living room, and we're just playing. It's a really exciting time. The first time you play a song is kind of the best part of the whole experience. It feels like a really natural process is happening.

I'm really relieved, because you get off the road after five years, and you're like, "Man, I don't want to play music anymore." But it's been really rewarding over the last couple months to not have to be like, "OK guys, we're gonna make a record, it's gonna take six months, we're recording in this studio." It's like, "We have no idea what we're doing, but I feel like playing with you this afternoon, so how about we have some tea and play songs for a little bit." I mean, I don't think any of us to spend three years making a record. But after the whole wild ride the last five years, I think it's been super healthy for us to just stay at home, tend our gardens, and actually have a real life. You can feel that in the music now. And fucking hell, what a crazy time to be living in. I think we're all really excited.

Pitchfork: Speaking of which, do you have any plans to perform at any Obama inauguration festivities?

WB: I don't know. There have been a couple emails going back and forth; I don't know if we have too many curse words in our lyrics or something. I'm not sure what's happening with it. We would obviously be totally stoked to play, but I'm sure there are a lot of political considerations. We were in Haiti about a month ago, Régine and I, which was a really mind-blowing experience. It was a couple days after the election. We were in Chicago for election night, and let me tell you, in rural Haiti, they were just as excited as in downtown Chicago.

Pitchfork: You contributed a song, "When Lenin Was Little", to the the forthcoming Red Hot benefit compilation Dark Was the Night. Is that a new song?

WB: No, that's actually the one song that didn't make it on Funeral that was recorded at that time, but it didn't really fit in with the rest of the songs.

Pitchfork: Are you working on anything else, besides the very beginnings of a new album?

WB: Not really. We finished that movie music, I'm not sure when the film's coming out, the Richard Kelly film, which was interesting.

Pitchfork: Wait a second! You did end up contributing music to The Box!?

WB: Yeah. So that will be out at some point.

Pitchfork: Did you write the entire score?

WB: Yes, me, Régine, and Owen [Pallett] from Final Fantasy. It's kind of Hitchcocky, movie, orchestral, Mellotron stuff. It's instrumental music. No songs. It's interesting. We didn't really think we were going to do the whole thing, and then it just kind of was easier once we got in. It was like, "Oh well, we'll just keep going." It has so much to do with the editing, and your job is just to help the director. It's a very different experience.

Pitchfork: What attracted you to this project?

WB: I could really imagine what he wanted for the music. It's based on a "Twilight Zone" episode set in the 70s. The guy works at NASA. It's got this kind of sci-fi, kind of Alfred Hitchcock feel. Those Hitchcock scores are some of my favorite movie music. We have a Mellotron, and since it's the 70s, it really seemed to fit. It was just really easy to imagine the type of music that would help the movie. It was a very ego-less project. The goal was to kind of bang some music out and not be, like, slitting our wrists over if the tambourine is too loud. That was a good experiment.

Pitchfork: "My Body Is a Cage" was recently featured in a commercial for the new movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Why did you agree to license the song for that?

WB: It was one of the fist things that's come down the pipe where... it didn't even really have that much to do with the movie, but just the trailer was very appropriate. Usually, people send us stuff, and if the song wasn't in there, it wouldn't really matter that much. It could really be anything. For this one, it makes sense. It's about a guy trapped in a wrong body...It was artistically done and it worked with the theme of the song. It wasn't a big deal. Everyone was like, "Yeah, it looks good." Most of the time, you get sent some commercial for something and it's just like, "Insert band here." It's not that interesting.

Pitchfork: Do you have anything else going on that you'd like people to know about?

WB: In the very short term, I have to go to the police department because someone broke into my car last night, smashed out the back window, and stole my iPod.

Pitchfork: Oh no! That sucks! I hope they catch the person!

Pitchfork: Arcade Fire's Butler Talks Miroir Noir, The Box Score

Radiointervju med Win

Win ställde här om veckan upp för en intervju med college-radiostationen KCSUFM. Han pratar bl.a. om möjligheten att rösta tidigt i det nyss avslutade valet, situationen på Haiti och hur arbetet med nya albumet fortgår. En riktigt bra intervju. Win låter som alltid väldigt engagerad och framför sina synpunkter bra, synd bara att intervjuaren får avbryta honom på slutet då de får ont om tid.
Régine och Win befinner sig just nu på Haiti för att se hur de pengar de samlat in under turnén används. En dollar/euro av varje biljett under hela turnén gick som ni säkert kommer ihåg till Partners In Health som jobbar oförtrutet på Haiti, ett av världens fattigaste länder som ju drabbades enormt hårt av orkanen Hannah med helt katastrofala följder. Kan i sammanhanget vara intressant att veta att de samlade in 500,000 dollar (nästan 4 miljoner svenska kronor) åt dem. Vilket i ett så extremt fattigt land betyder mer än vi kan förstå. Fantastiskt!

Donera till Partners In Health

Jeremy & Sarah måste göra fler intervjuer tillsammans!

Det här är nog fortfarande den mest.. uhm.. udda intervju jag någonsin hört. Den 24:e mars förra året intervjuades Jeremy och Sarah i Arcade Fire av Nardwuar. Det här samtalet är så sjukt så jag vet inte vart jag ska ta vägen bitvis. Man vill bara sjunka under marken ibland, asgarva ibland och ibland, ja ibland vill man bara skrika ut 'VA?!'

Nardwuar - Interview with Jeremy & Sarah.mp3

Sweden that we just played was really beautiful and that was on this crazy island. Yeah, it was called Cirkus. And it's on an island that's all like museums and weird old like kind of cirkus-y buildings and it's super-super-super beautiful. That place was gorgeous! / Sarah

Win & The Boss

Eftersom jag varit så slö under sommaren får jag kompensera upp det lite nu. Här kommer hela artikeln med Win & Bruce Springsteen tillsammans. De är rejält högupplösta så kan ta lite tid att tanka hem om man sitter på en långsam uppkoppling.

1. Klicka på bilderna
2. Vänta på att de laddat klart
3. Spara dem
4. Läs intervjun och beskåda bilderna

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Hoobastank stinks!

En gammal men lite smårolig intervju med Win och Tim. Hoobastank, usch!

Tim blir intervjuad

Don't Do It fick en pratstund med Tim nyligen. Läs intervjun här.

Win får repetera sig själv...

...i en intervju med pedestrian.tv någon gång förra året.

Samma intervju, mer upprepningar...

Intressant intervju

En intervju från 2004 men den är så pass lång och samtidigt hela tiden intressant att jag tycker den är värd att läsas fortfarande. Det märks verkligen att detta är innan de blivit bombarderade med samma frågor sjuttioelvatusen gånger.

Arcade Fire
Win Butler and Regine Chassagne
August 10, 2004
Locale: Café Amandine, corner of St. Urbain/St. Viateur, home to the finest and most frugal eggs benedict in Montreal

It seems to me that you disappeared for a whole year to make this record. I remember hearing a version of “Wake Up” a year ago this week. Almost every day of every week whenever I’d bump into one of you, you’d always say, “We’re still recording!” Was it really that intense?
W: When we first went into the studio, we just wanted to record two songs—“Wake Up” and “Power Out”—while [his brother] Will [Butler] was in town, to put out on a single. We just did three sessions, three days, and we didn’t do anything else for a long time. We didn’t really start again until the winter, because we didn’t really have a band at that point. We taught [Wolf Parade drummer ]Arlen [Thompson] the song the day before we rehearsed it. Regine played drums on “Power Out,” but that didn’t end up working out. It wasn’t like we went in to make a record. Then we started playing with [producer/drummer] Howard [Bilerman] right after that, so we had to get to be able to play again.

Was it important to take a lot of time recording? A lot of people’s first record they want to do as quickly as possible, or as cheaply as possible.
W: We weren’t actually in the studio that much. The thing about this time was that we had to work around our schedules. Everyone was working, and I was still in school, and the studio was booked a lot. We were second priority fitting in whenever there were holes. There were five days when Howard went away and Silver Mt. Zion was on the road, and we got the keys and we were in there for 24 hours a day pretty much. It wasn’t a situation where we were a band for a long time before, touring the songs. We were trying to figure out how to play together and arrange the songs.

Would you still be recording if Merge hadn’t given you a deadline? You were still recording and remixing right down to the wire.
W: I wish we had more time and money. I think we did pretty good with what we had. Maybe we’ll have more time next time. But I don’t want to take more time, I just want to have more time in a row. We could have done the whole thing in a month if it was a solid month.

The more I listen to it, there are no wasted notes. Everything is very constructed and deliberate and layered. I can’t imagine going back and thinking of what you would change. It sounds fully realised.
W: I don’t want to ever mix a record again.

You’d rather hand it over?
W: Yeah. This was a weird situation because since we did a lot of recording when Howard was gone, we’re not good at labelling what track was what. It would have been impossible for a third party to come in, because it was so unprofessional. Like halfway through the tambourine track, Regine’s vocals might come in. We’d try to jam so much into the tracks we had. The mixing/mastering period was so hard. I hate it. You lose a lot of perspective. “Haiti,” which has turned out to be one of my favourite songs on the record, almost didn’t make it on there. We were so depressed with the way it sounded. We were so overloaded from working and thought it was such a piece of crap. Every day we were tormenting ourselves. Regine and I worked on it for five days, doing a completely different mix, stripped it down and got rid of everything. Then Richard [Reed Parry] and Tim [Kingsbury] came back after being away a while and said, ‘No, this is crap.’ So we went back to square one and redid it. It turns out that I like it a lot and I listen to it a lot. It was the same thing with “No Cars Go” from the EP.
R: We almost didn’t put it out. It was such a mess.
W: It sucked so bad. I just assumed that it wasn’t usable. When we were in Maine [where the EP was recorded] listening to it, we just thought, ‘Oh god, this sucks.’ After working on it for a while, I went back to it after assuming that it wasn’t going to be on the record, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s not worse than anything else.’ (laughs)

A song like “Haiti” was one of my immediate favourites, because it wasn’t one I’d seen you play live, as opposed to everything else here. But even the sound of it is very different than the rest of the album, different textures and instrumentation.
R: We were scared of that one too.
W: We did a demo of that on the computer, just to flesh it out. We had these two organs at my house and threw up a room mic and me and Richard just did some stuff on the fly. We ended up really liking it. And there was a percussion track we really liked too. We ended up using this electronic kick, the organs and this percussion track from the total rough mix as the backbone of the real song.
R: It was one of my favourite things. I had to go to work, teaching arts and crafts to kids at the school just over there. And I came back, and they had recorded this.

But you added vocals later.
W: That took fucking forever. That song didn’t have a vocal melody.
R: We had the words.
W: But we didn’t know how it was going to sound. Because the sound was so bizarre, the way it was recorded, it was really important to find the right vocal sound. We kept recording vocals, and the song would sound worse. It was better as an instrumental. We had to try and find a sound that would sit in the mix and actually make the song better.

I don’t know if you went through various sequences, but it’s paced perfectly. “Tunnels” opens beautifully, and “In the Backseat” is an ideal closer. It feels like a full narrative, and there even seems to consciously be two sides of a vinyl record.
W: There definitely is a side A and B. It’ll be nice to hear it on vinyl, because I think there’s a natural flow to the two sides, and that was intentional. But it was a pressure thing. We had to submit the artwork three weeks before we were done. We had to decide the order without having final mixes. We didn’t even know if “Haiti” was going to make it on the record.

Yet it bleeds well into “Lies.”
W: That was intentional. We knew it would sound good going into the other one.

Were these songs always intended to be a group? Because I know you have a stockpile of other songs I’ve seen live.
W: There were a couple of others that didn’t really work out or complement the others.
R: We did all the songs we chose to do. But it’s not like these songs were born to be together.

What’s your song stockpile up to?
W: We’ve been handicapped for the past six months. We’ve written a few things, but not much. We were so prolific for the first couple of years.
R: Then all the recording, and organization, and touring…

What was that period like? Were you writing a couple of songs a day?
W: Yeah, for a while there. I think we’re getting back into it again now. You have to slow down at a certain point, too. It’s a lot better with a song like ‘Rebellion’ that we came up with while we were recording, and without labouring over it too much. Fresh stuff is better in that way.

Ever since I’ve known you, since the first time I saw the band, you’ve always been very demanding of yourselves, of your performances. It’s not something you take lightly: the show, the way a record turns out. Are you happy with the record? Are you happy with your shows lately?
R: Oh no! I’m never content. For me, I’m always at square zero trying to get to square one. [food arrives] For me, I haven’t achieved anything yet. This is a start.
W: I think the record is an improvement over the EP. Some people might say the EP is better, but that’s a load of crap. The singing on this is a lot better, for both of us. I definitely think there’s progress, and that’s what keeps me moving. We’re figuring some things out. I don’t know if it ever feels like ‘Oh, sweet, we’ve done something really awesome.’ The only time I felt really free was when Will was around and I wasn’t playing instruments all the time and I could actually think about doing other things. I feel in a rut having to perform while holding a piece of crap and trying to make the song stay together.
R: Me too! I get so angry at my keyboards. I always told myself that I never wanted to play keyboards in a rock band—that would suck! If there’s a girl in a band, she’s always playing tambourine and a keyboard, it’s so annoying. But I end up doing that anyway and I get angry.
W: The guitar’s bad too, Regine.

At least you get to walk around [with a guitar].
R: It’s like I’m sitting at a desk, it’s really annoying.
W: At least you get to sing without holding an instrument once in a while, that’s more than I do.

How often have you been playing drums now on stage?
R: There are two or three songs now I play on stage.
W: There’s a bit more on the record.

When did that start?
R: I believe it was…
W: When we didn’t have a drummer!
R: I think it was end of last summer, exactly a year ago.

When did the dress code enter the band?
R: Oh, dress code is annoying.
W: It’s in flux.
R: I’m tired of wearing the same thing all the time.

Do you, though?
W: No, you don’t.
R: I change my socks.
W: Oh, everything’s annoying, Regine! Dress code, annoying. Playing keyboards, annoying.
R: Oh, what do you want? No, I love playing keyboards. I just want to dance too. That’s my problem.

Did you always want the presentation of the show to be theatrical?
R: For me, I don’t think about theatrical. For me, it’s not something that I put on. It’s not much of a game or a character. It comes out theatrical, but I don’t think of that way.

Maybe just compared to every other band.
W: Maybe. The clothes we wear is more for us than the audience. It’s important for me to put on clothes that I’m not already wearing. It puts you in a different mode. There’s a difference between playing a show and walking down the street. You have to appreciate your audience, which makes it different from playing in your living room. What we’re actually wearing is abritrary, and it will change. It’s more for our own headspace, to make it special. Also, I was a teenager during the grunge thing, which was a reaction to hair metal and glamourous crap, and everyone wore whatever they felt like. I think it would have been unusual in the 60s to see a band not wearing some kind of stage clothes. Maybe I’m wrong. Jimi Hendrix wore really weird, exaggerated clothes.

He’d also wear that on the street, though.
W: That’s true. He lived the part.

A friend of mine looked at a picture of Modest Mouse the other day and said, ‘How come these guys always look like they’re coming over to fix your plumbing?’ But I was remembering some early shows where you were quite demanding of the audience. Very intense, where you’d almost be staring down the audience. I’ve noticed that happening less since the band has had a more solid line-up. Is that because you feel more comfortable with what’s happening on-stage?
W: I don’t know. (long pause)

Do you expect certain things from your audience?
W: The audience has a lot of power as to how the show goes, almost as much power as the band. It’s impossible for a band to make something be there that isn’t willingly given by the audience. It’s annoying when bands are always saying, ‘Come on, people, dance! Come on! Dance!’ I wouldn’t say we’re expecting people to do something they’re not comfortable with or that they’re not naturally going to do, but I think we do appreciate that the audience has a lot of power, and we’re not going to pretend like they’re not there. We’re sharing something with them and performing for them. There’s some confrontation in that naturally.

Speaking of discussions with the audience, I though that the artwork in the album looks like a contract, that you all signed. It looks like this is something you’re promising the audience. Why did you do that?
R: I wanted to do that. It’s more personal.
W: For a while we were going to make t-shirts with Tim’s home address on them. (laughs)

Why?
W: I don’t know, it’s just really personal information! The whole t-shirt would just be his address.

Not ‘Arcade Fire,’ not even ‘Tim Kingsbury’…
W: Nope!
R: Also, this makes it seem like real people, who signed here.
W: Me and Will’s signature is quite similar. The last name is almost identical. Whenever we get a rental car and have to initial things it looks exactly the same.

The way the band sounds now—is that the way you always envisioned it, or does it have a lot to do with the people who ended up playing in the band? Everyone has very distinct personalities.
W: ‘Wake Up’ was written in reaction to the band breaking up. We wanted to do something that was louder than anything we’d done before, very bombastic. We wanted the first song we played after we started playing again to be very bombastic. At least, I did. It was written as an opening song. Some of the heavier stuff, like ‘Laika,’ came from me being sick of playing acoustic guitars…
R: And xylophones.
W: It will probably swing the other way eventually, because you get sick of playing loud rock music after a while.
R: It’s a phase.

What did you think would happen in March, 2003 [when the band appeared to break up on stage, at their EP release party]? Many people thought the band would be over.
R: We were a bit depressed, but we’ve never really known what’s going to happen with the band.

Wasn’t there one show after that with just the two of you?
W: Yeah, but it wasn’t supposed to be. That’s actually when we met Wolf Parade, that was their first show. We showed up and none of the drummers showed up, and we figured we’d play anyway. It was really depressing.
R: We got our friend Josh just to play kick on one song.
W: There weren’t many people there and we just thought, ‘what has this come to?’ But we’re just going to keep going. Not playing is never really an option. It always swings back and forth between being hopeful and being hopeless. We never know what’s going on. The one bright spot of that show was meeting Wolf Parade, because we really liked them.

How long have you known Richard [Reed Parry]?
W: He morphed into playing in the band. When we got back from that summer [he had recorded the EP], we had played together a lot and become friends. He played upright bass and some other stuff at the CD release. There was a while when he was considering learning drums for us.

I wanted to ask a bit about the very beginning. Was that you and some friends in Texas, or Maine?
W: Me and my best friend Josh. I was in school in New York and was really depressed. I didn’t have many close friends and didn’t know what I was doing. I was going to this really expensive liberal arts school and taking all these classes, but I spent all day skipping class and writing songs on a four-track. That’s all I did. I thought, what the hell am I doing? It popped into my head one day that I should play in a band with my best friend Justin, who was my best friend from boarding school. We were really close and he influenced me a lot. He had this mythical friend Josh, who was even taller than me and a really talented songwriter. I thought the three of us should be in a band. So I went to a pay phone, called Justin and told him, ‘You guys are moving to Maine this summer. My parents won’t be there and we’re going to start a band.’ From that moment on, I committed to playing music in a band. It was really clear all of the sudden that it was what I wanted to do.

That was well before you moved here.
W: After that I was in Boston for a year and then I moved here in 1999. I’ve been following that trajectory ever since.

You followed Josh here. Was he ever in a performing incarnation of the band?
W: Yeah, for about a year in Montreal. Then he left. Regine didn’t know what to do in the band at first, because there were three guitar players playing all the time and there wasn’t space to do anything. But we knew she had to play and we knew we had to play together but it wasn’t really clear. As that fell apart and Regine and I started writing more, there was a sound of the two or our styles coming together that became realised more. It was real, it wasn’t hypothetical.
R: At first it was really clashing, but then we started being influenced by each other and knew what the other one was going to do, learning to adjust to each other. It was very intense, because we were falling in love at the same time.

Did Josh not want to continue with the band, or did he not like Montreal anymore?
W: It was kind of weird, but Josh had this intuition that he needed to do something else. It’s not like we broke up or anything. He just felt inspired to do something else. He’s getting married this October and I’m his best man. We’re still very close. He did all the animation on the website.

Does he write all the ooo-ooo parts in the songs? That seems to be a trademark of all his co-writes.
W: (laughs) He wrote the bass line in “Power Out.”

The Cure-like one?
[they both sing it]

And the others are “Tunnels” and “Headlights”?
W: Yeah, he helped me write the vocal melody on that one. That’s about four years old.

So Regine, you were singing jazz and performing medieval music at the time?
R: I was doing medieval music and singing jazz. I quit the medieval band a year ago. I want to sing jazz still. I think there’s a lot of possibilities there. I don’t know. I’d like to do something different.

Did you have high school bands? Any rock bands?
R: No, this is my first rock band. Before I met Win, I was really not connected to the rock band world. I started meeting all these people in rock bands, and I thought, ‘What’s with all this rock band stuff?’ I wouldn’t ever have thought of it. I was mostly making music in my head. I had a piano in my house when I was six and I started playing. I took a couple of lessons but really, really didn’t like it, but I played the piano so much. The piano was my friend. In my neighbourhood there weren’t any friends my age. They were my sister’s age or younger, or way too old.

Were you learning songs by ear or by sheet music?
R: Oh no, no sheet music. I can read now, but I’m not the best reader. I would play everything I heard, whether it was a classical song on the radio or the Super Mario theme.
W: I’m lucky in a sense. It seems like people in your family must have missed that you were such an amazing musician, otherwise you might have been pushed into a total classical world.
R: [sings operatically]
W: Because you could totally do it, and they’d be idiots not to notice. You were picking up all these classical songs off the radio by ear, and if you’d done that in my family, my mom would have made you go to conservatory and really push it. You have such a natural thing. But luckily… untrained.

Did you always want to play music then?
R: I didn’t know any musicians around me. For me it was such a privilege to meet a musician, and I would grill them: ‘You play drums? You play music? Tell me everything!’ When I was young I would think that in the best world I would hang out with musicians. It was a very naïve way of thinking. I always took music very seriously, because it was not something that was obvious. I didn’t have a lot of CDs, so everything I heard was very important.

If not rock music, what were you listening to?
R: A mix of so much stuff. I listened to the Beatles a lot, jazz, classical. Every music that I don’t understand, I’m automatically interested, because I have to figure it out. That’s what happened when I was really young and I heard jazz. It was, ‘woah.’ I had to listen to it until I got it. My understanding of music is totally personal, because I remember those moments when I was listening to jazz and I had those little songs I would tape off the radio, like Charlie Parker. One day I heard the same song, but not Charlie Parker doing it, but I knew the changes and it all clicked. ‘This is the same song, but they’re just improvising over it!’

The floodgates opened!
R: Exactly.

When did you start playing in the medieval band, then?
R: In CEGEP [Quebec’s post-high school pre-university schools]. I was really interested in it, because it works on a completely different aethetic than any modern music, from the Renaissance up to today. It’s a completely different era.
W: I think a lot of people confuse Renassiance music and medieval music.
R: Yeah, it’s much weirder than that. [sings cartoonish version of Renaissance music]

Was that with people your own age?
R: People my own age. This girl wrote in the school paper, ‘Do you want to play in a medieval band?’ I thought it would be interesting, but I went and it was just a bunch of girls singing. I was about to quit, but we finally found some guys and it got a little better. Even then it was a bit, ech. Then we got more instruments and it got a bit more rock and I was happy.

You were playing what?
R: I learned to play recorder really well, by accident basically. (laughs)

Hmmm. Just like the drums, the piano…
R: We played this big show with my medieval band for New Year’s Eve, and I was playing recorder and everyone was dancing like crazy, almost like a rave. It never made any sense to me. For me, recorder was like in grade two, so boring.

So Win, before New York did you have high school bands?
W: I played in a band in high school with my best friend. Our shining moment was at rock assembly.

Rock assembly?!
W: Well, we had assembly once a week where high brow speakers would come. Once a year they’d do this rock assembly where they’d let student bands play for the other students. My friend Justin, it was his last year. I was in third year, he was in fourth. He was in love with this girl, our friend Hilary, and they dated for eight years after that. We played ‘Just Like Heaven’ by the Cure in rock assembly and it was amazing. That was the highlight of high school for me.

I’ve heard you talk about the Cure before, but I never noticed it in Arcade Fire until I heard the recorded version of “Power Out.”
W: I haven’t listened to them in a long time, but for a brief period in high school they were the band that got me into totally different kinds of music, it changed the kind of music I liked.

You both grew up in suburbs, yes?
Both: Yes.

Neighbourhood is a running theme of the record. How do you think your music relates to growing up in that experience, or does it at all? Is there something about the grand gesture of Arcade Fire songs that fits in there, in the same way Bruce Springsteen sang about getting out and dreaming of something bigger?
[uncomfortably long silence]

Maybe that’s a ridiculous question.
W: I think everyone tries to find some meaning in the situation they’re raised in. The music we make could only exist in a privilged kind of environment, but that doesn’t mean that the emotional experience or what you’re trying to find out about life isn’t profound or important. It’s kind of crazy that people in different social situations can have such a similar experience, but everyone’s just trying to understand their own experience.

Why do you think it exists from a privileged position?
W: Well, we own instruments, we have an apartment where we can play music in. It’s referential in a way that is an educated referentia. You know what I mean? It isn’t just folk music. There is a sense that it is part of a lifestyle, but it’s more complicated than that. I don’t know.
R: That made me think of something else. The audience for me, when I was playing with my medieval band, we had the weirdest gigs ever. Once we played in a mall, or people would hire us to play in front of a store, or in an old folks home. When we played, it was often just acoustic. We would show up and just play. I discovered a lot of things that don’t happen anymore, where you have bands that are so far away with a bunch of lights and it’s so loud. Sometimes we’d play in a restaurant no bigger than this. I would get so much out of that. We would play at parties and they would treat us like family. It was a really rich experience for me. That’s why every time, I really want to see the audience and who’s there. A lot of bands, sometimes you see people [on stage] and they look away: ‘where are you? You’re not in your living room! There are 400 people here to listen to you!’

Watching this band, which I have many times, I always enjoy watching people who’ve never seen you before. The first time I saw you was in Toronto, which I think was your first time there, with Jim Guthrie. Then the Nathan Lawr show at the Rivoli [their second Toronto show], or even last week at Chapel Hill: I always enjoy looking back at the audience, and it’s immediately moving them, they’re reacting very strongly right away. Mouth open, eyes wide open. Maybe it’s because the opening number is written for that purpose, as you were saying. What do you hear from people directly, what do they tell you after shows?
W: We’re in this mode right now, especially when we did the tour with the Unicorns, where people haven’t really heard of us before, especially in the States. That’s the performance mode we’re in. The last time we played in Toronto and Montreal, it was harder. We haven’t figured out how to play when people are familiar with your stuff and have expectations. I know this is a really limited time, but it’s a really great energy. I know it’s not going to be like that forever.

What did you learn from touring with the Unicorns last month?
W: We learned that we want to tour. And it’s hard to eat well.
R: Learn how to stay human after sitting in a car for seven hours, getting up, moving some amps, then ‘rrrrrawwwwr,’ then go to sleep.

What has it been like watching that band get so big?
W: Being in the States with them was cool. I think they divide audience a lot of times. I think it’s great, seeing what they’ve built for themselves down there just on the power of their personalities and their music. They’ve put a lot of thought into it.

You knew them when they were playing to nobody here.
W: They’ve come a long way. They’re a great band and play really well together. I think they’ll be around for a long time. They’re writing really great songs now too. They’re like a real band.

Like a real band?!
W: No, they’re a real band. Not all bands are real bands. A lot of bands are the idea of a band.

Going back a bit again, can you tell me about recording the EP in Maine? Was that a living/working arrangment and how long were you there?
W: Two months. We were, anyway, everyone else was there for a month.

That was a combination of Montreal people and high school friends?
W: Mostly Montreal people. There were some people on the island you played some of the orchestral instruments. But it was mostly Brendan [Reed, also Win’s roommate at the time], Dane [Mills] and Myles [Broscoe]. And Richard.

How many people were living there?
R: Me, you, Will, Brendan, Dane, Myles, Richard, Gregg [Davenport]. That’s it.

Was it an idyllic thing or was it intense being in closed quarters?
W: It was a little segregated. Even before we went, stuff was a bit stressed. I don’t know, man. Being in a band is hard. I don’t know how to do it yet. It’s hard to keep it together.
R: It’s hard to get everyone on the same page about what we’re doing and why we do it. Everyone has to have the same motivation.
W: You have to be united, but at the same time everyone has to be coming from a different place creatively or it will be really stale. It’s impossible to balance. You just have to balance it for as long as you can. Almost no bands stay together unless, like, huge sums of money come into play. It is possible. It does happen. But I’d say that the overwhelming number of bands break up unless some giant sum of money brings the Pixies back together to tour! (both laugh)

The ones that do stay together that long are like family and understand each other intrinsically. And family is a big influence on the lyrics. Is everyone’s family very supportive?
W: My family is very supportive.
R: My family is strange.

When did all the funerals begin, that play into the lyrical theme of the record?
R: There was Nancy my grandma, my mom—but that was before. Alvino, your grandpa.
W: Alvino was huge on a musical level. For me, he was very inspirational.

Did you know him well? How often would you see him?
W: I got to know him really well over the last five years or so. I spent a lot of time with him. He was so sharp, so there mentally. I’d ask him a lot of questions.
R: He was 95. I would speak to him on the phone, and there was no difference between him and any 20 year old. He was cooler than anyone I knew.
W: At the wedding he stood up and gave his speech and had everyone in stitches. He got the biggest reception. Great comedic timing.

Did he hear the Arcade Fire?
W: I don’t think he would have liked it. He doesn’t like jazz combos! (laughs)

And the Arcade Fire are a jazz combo?
W: No, but he played in the big band era, so I think he thought the combo thing was a bit of a rip off. So the rock’n’roll thing was even a bigger ripoff of jazz combos, and where the hell we are now is some post-modern monstrosity of the copy of the copy. I think he could have appreciated aspects of it. We played ‘In the Backseat’ for my extended family at the funeral one night, and they all really liked it. It was just piano, guitar, Will was there and my mom played harp. There are certain songs that we can play for our families that aren’t too weird.

Is that a hard song to play? Do you have to remove yourself from the lyrics?
R: It’s always a very intense song. That’s why I’m saying that we do looks theatrical, but it’s certainly not a Broadway show.

When you write lyrics, do you think in French or English first? There are some French lyrics on the record.
R: I’m sort of overwhelmed by English these days, because I speak it all day all the time. I’m kind of going crazy. I’m sure I’ll go into a rebellion stage soon and speak only French.
W: English works really well with rock music because of the rhythm of it, the accent is always on the first syllable. ‘Hey! You! Get offa my cloud!’
R: With French it’s always on the second.
(they both do exaggerated imitations of French singing)
W: That works better with cabaret than rock music.
R: I find it more difficult to include French in rock music. I’m trying to find a way that I’ll be okay with, that I personally will think sounds good.

The songs on the album that have French aren’t really rock songs.
R: No.
W: We’re conscious of the rhythmic aspects of it when we put it together. You can do it, and sometimes a song works that needs an accent on the second syllable.
R: Sometimes we’ll try it in both languages and it works better in French.
W: What French is amazing for is if the structure is a bit more free, like Jacques Brel style. Then it’s almost like the vocals are a drum, at least to me.
R: Know what? I listened to Jacques Brel recently, and realised how much it’s been ingrained in me and yet I’d completely forgot about it because it was all on records at my parents. All that orchestration. It was everything I liked, beautiful arrangements.

I love the sounds of the strings on this record. Even though I’m sure it’s only two or three strings multi-tracked, it sounds huge.
W: It’s two tracks of four strings.
R: Oh! (gasps) That day was one of the best days of my life, having all these strings in my house, in my living room. Because I played drums on that track, I knew when and how it was going to speed up, so I was conducting them all. I was in wonderland! I couldn’t have been happier. It was like my birthday times 1100. So fun, like a big party.

Finally, how did it feel last week in North Carolina [at Mergefest]?
W: There was one point after we played [on opening night, at Local 506] when they were doing Merge karaoke. [Win and Regine did Magnetic Fields’ “I Was Born on a Train”; Richard did a Lambchop song with Merge’s Christina Rentz.] A bunch of people who work there were singing a Neutral Milk Hotel song. I was so happy to be a part of what they’re doing. Can you imagine going to a Columbia records party, and having the entire staff drunk and giving it and singing the stuff in their catalogue? They were so into it.
R: You know they love their music so much.

I know that Merge was a goal for you for a while, or at least one of the labels that you really wanted to work with. I remember you giving the EP to the Essex Green when they were in town. Why did you want to work with them so much?
R: When I met the Merge people, they were really down to earth and looked at you in the eye. They were really, really nice.
W: I just don’t really like indie rock very much. The one time I was actually forced to listen to college radio for a long time, I was working in a store, and the Magnetic Fields and Neutral Milk Hotel were two of the only things I actually thought were real and had a lot of weight to them as records. A lot of times, people who record themselves and do the indie rock thing doesn’t really reach me, but that stuff really did. Both [Magnetic Fields’] 69 Love Songs and the Neutral Milk Hotel stuff was all done themselves, and it sounds as good as anything.
-end-

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