Arcade Fire Working on New Album While Under Quarantine

Milestone birthdays are a good time for reflection as Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler demonstrates. When he turned 30, Butler and band were finishing up their award-winning album The Suburbs. Today, as he turns 40, he confirms that, despite the coronavirus, the band are working on their next LP. He writes:

Regine and I have been writing for the last couple of years, and the band was a few months into recording new material when COVID-19 hit…We had been exploring a lot of lyrical and musical themes that feel almost eerily related to what is happening now (we actually have a song called Age of Anxiety written a year ago for Christ’s sake - ha ha ). Needless to say, the writing has intensified, and the work is flowing out... It is challenging as ever, and with just as much purpose.

Though this crisis may ultimately change or destroy aspects of the music industry, I believe it will only strengthen music as an art form. It has never felt more essential, spiritual and irreplaceable...a church that lives in the air between the source and your ears... I just want you to know, dear reader, that you aren’t forgotten. The world is experiencing incredible suffering and uncertainty. I already know people who have been sick and died, and hope that you and those you love have been spared.

He adds that it the album won't be coming out anytime soon, clarifying "…eventually…not soon…if you don’t have patience by now, you definitely aren’t reading this."

Read the entire message below via the band's Instagram: