With his wife, Régine Chassagne, Butler is best known for his first Arcade Fire. The band formed in Montreal at the turn of the millennium, quickly gained the reputation of one of the best live in the world and during five albums became an aristocracy of indie music. They were anointed by Davids Bowie and Byrne. won a Grammy, a Juno and a Brit. They played Obama’s inauguration. and often used their platform for political activism, promoting nonprofit health care organizations, indigenous protesters, and a number of Haitian charities (Chassagne is of Haitian descent). Most recently, the band raised $ 100,000 for the Ukraine Relief Fund by playing a series of small club performances throughout the United States, including the Bowery Ballroom in New York. Subscribe to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the magazine’s biggest features, as well as a comprehensive list of our weekly highlights. At times, they have infuriated their audiences: the races surrounding the release of the 2013 album Reflektor with discos – secret concerts, street parties, costume codes for the public – have vaguely brought disturbing echoes of the U2’s Zoo TV campaign. But it was the release of their latest album, Everything Now 2017, that shook the fans the most. The album was accompanied by a high-profile advertising campaign claiming that Arcade Fire was now part of a multinational company. They called their tour Infinite Content and published parody album reviews, fake news, ironic product placements. For some, it was a glamorous comment for the consumer era. to others it seemed ridiculous, overly serious, and ill-conceived. For many, it was uncomfortably removed from the heart of their live performances. This month, the band released their sixth album, We, an album they describe as “the forces that take us away from the people we love.” [and] the urgent need to overcome them “. This is Arcade Fire, there is an intense spiritual background, a nod to the oversized black hole of Sagittarius A * and a visitor turn by Peter Gabriel. But it is also the most tender album of the band since their early production. spacious and simple and sweet, an album born out of the constant proximity of pandemic days. Butler, Sasan and their son moved to Louisiana six years ago, fascinated by the mix of cultures and unbridled passion for music and creativity. “What is Mark Twain’s line that there are only three cities in America?” Butler asks as we walk down Magazine Street. “New York, San Francisco and New Orleans. “Everything else is Cleveland.” Butler cuts a prominent figure: a tall basketball player with blond hair, now wearing cream jeans, a white T-shirt with a tie and a black bomber jacket. There is a tension in the way he speaks, whether he is talking about a Mardi Gras who spent playing cowbell on the TBC Brass Band in New Orleans, or about the hanging bags of the US presidential race in 2000. But he seems to fit comfortably in this neighborhood, greeting warms the coffee barista and happily tells the story of Miss Mae’s, a 24-hour “dirtbag bar” located on the corner of Magazine and Napoleon. [The Trump presidency] were quite turbulent times in the US. You would wake up and have no idea what would happen Régine Chassagne Down the street, Butler leads us to a former lunch, now home to Peaches Records. Peaches, he says, has somehow been removed from the record store he frequented as a teenager in suburban Houston, Texas – a chain store that sold mostly CDs and where he sought to nurture his love of New Order and the Cure. He talks about how his mother played the jazz harp, his grandfather played the steel on a pedal, and how the first time he heard Smokey Robinson sing, he could not believe that this music was made by human beings. “Look at that,” Butler says, holding up an octagonal copy of the Rolling Stones collection through the Past Darkly, and holding on to the qualities of a good record. His focus is on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and the benefits of the small album. “There are like four songs and a lot of connectivity,” he says. “And they stretch it a bit, so you have this space to hear things. It’s not even my favorite record, but it’s an example of consistency. You look at the album artwork, you hear it, it’s very cohesive. ” He was looking for something similar in We, he says, sharing more songs than ever before to make a 40-minute stretch record. “We cut some very good shit,” he says. “That’s how we did it.” You win again Ar Arcade Fire feels love at the Bowery Ballroom in New York in March. Photo: María José Govea We walk along Napoleon to a Creole-Italian restaurant to meet Chassagne. This afternoon, the rest of the band will arrive in New Orleans to begin rehearsals for the tour, and Butler is eager to return to the world again after the lockdown restrictions. He remembers the band’s recent show in New York, how nice it felt once again in front of the audience. “A hundred people spit in my face,” he says. “I felt like I was being baptized.” On the bench at Pascal’s Manale, the oyster Thomas “Uptown T” Stewart stands by a hill of silver shells, discussing the peaceful pleasures of Cyrano de Bergerac, jazz, poetry, and calm people. We drink a martini, and Butler tries to convince me that the best way to eat an oyster is to sit it on top of a salt cracker, with horseradish, ketchup and a little lemon juice. Chassagne stands next to him and unceremoniously pulls out a black oyster from his shell. Stewart is impressed. “You tore it down as if you were just making a good bourbon!” he tells her. “I caught your rhythm. You have very good energy “. Chassagne’s energy has always been unquestionable. When Butler first saw her, he sang jazz standards at an art opening in Montreal, and immediately asked her to join his band. The strands of what he has described as “grandma’s music” – opera and Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf, somehow merging with Butler’s artistic pop influences. On stage, they make a similar achievement: Chassagne sings, dances, switches between accordion, keyboards and xylophone, seemingly on her own track as she plays the rest of the band. Back at the table this lunch, she sits in a black T-shirt and black jeans, with her dark curls matching the theme of Captain Kangaroo, playing inexplicably in the restaurant stereo. “I have never heard this song!” she says suddenly detached. Chassagne does it often – a sentence that stops abruptly so she can sing along to a chorus and then return to the conversation. Prior to joining Captain Kangaroo, he remembered how the new album took root in America before Covid, in the days of Trump’s presidency. “It was quite a turbulent time in the United States,” he says. “You would wake up and have no idea what would happen.” The band began working on an album that they hoped could reflect this upheaval: tracks such as the slow, syrupy End of the Empire reflecting the decline of Western power, with references to the cautious effect of television, the desire to erase and moon watching the ocean “where California was”. The album begins with Age of Anxiety I and II, tracks named after Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 1958 poem I Am Waiting. When Butler was 15, his English teacher invited his good friend Ferlinghetti to his school. It’s a life-changing moment for Butler. so much so that he stole a copy of the poet’s Coney Island of the Mind from the school library. Some time ago, he found the book in a box with his belongings in his parents’ house and started reading it again. When he came across the poem I Wait, “I just started crying,” he says. “All the themes in this poem are like all the shit I write about. Like looking for the soul of America, waiting for the American ball of eight to straighten and fly properly. It went so deep inside me. It entered me like a spirit. “ Butler’s relationship with his homeland has always been complicated and contradictory and highly charged. “This shit is very rotten, but there are beautiful things in it,” he says. “I live in America, I can not believe I still live in America. But there is something in it that I can not give up. And as an artist you try to open something and let the light in “. He talks about the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine. “And poor people are the ones who suffer,” he says. “Everywhere you look today, the tide of protectionist sentiment is flowing. The Russian oligarchs lose one of their boats, like a boo. Which boat did you miss? Everything is fine. “But all money is blood money, it’s all the suffering of the poor.” What role can music play? Butler stops. “We are the jokers of the court,” he says. “We are playing in court. The infrastructure of the thing is money. I do not know the answer. “But you can reduce it a bit.” Opposite the table, Chassagne frowns. “It’s not the court,” he says firmly. “There is no requirement for whom to play music. We play music in hospitals, for patients who die, we played at the opening. It is food for the soul. It is not that music heals the community, but music is the proof that …
