Arcade Fire have spoken to ClashMusic about the making of their epic new album ‘The Suburbs’.
Arcade Fire have always seemed to strive for something higher, more grand than most groups. The Canadian band match heart on sleeve songwriting with vast orchestration, pushing their way towards some un-named goal.
Returning with ‘The Suburbs’ the band released perhaps their statement to date. Arcade Fire broke a three year period of silence to return with an old fashioned double album, containing some of their most vital work.
Speaking to ClashMusic, Win Butler explained that recording the album was not always a smooth process. “Some of the stuff was the easiest we’ve ever done and some it was the hardest” he said. “There are six more songs than on our previous two records, so we were recording a lot more material. This record is really like a double LP: it barely fits on a CD. It was that much more work.”
Continuing, the songwriter revealed that Arcade Fire use Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’ as a benchmark. “While making this record I re-read Ed O’Brien’s diary about making ‘Kid A’. There were a couple of songs where he says, ‘We started this a year-and-a-half ago and it’s the simplest song on the album. We’ve just mixed it and it sounds like how it did on day one. It took us a year to finish.’ I think sometimes the simplest stuff takes the longest.”
Moving between two extremes, Arcade Fire emerged with ‘The Suburbs’. Working with lengthy session takes and demo recordings, the band collected together some of their most ambitious recordings to date.
“In my experience there are certain songs that the first time you play them they are never better and you spend the whole rest of your career trying to get back to the time you first played it. Then there are other songs that you’ve toured for two years and they sound great. When you try to have both of those kind of songs on a record it’s a real juggling act.”
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