Following a pair of comeback shows this week in New Orleans, Arcade Fire have revealed WE, the band’s first new album in five years.
WE, out May 6 via Columbia Records, was produced by longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich along with Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. The LP was recorded at studios in New Orleans, El Paso and Mount Desert Island in mid-2021 following a pandemic period that marked “the longest we’ve ever spent writing, uninterrupted, probably ever,” Butler said in a statement.
The album borrows its title from Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 sci-fi novel We, which would later inspire the dystopian works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. The seven-song LP is split across two sides, “I” and “WE,” respectively, with the first half exploring loneliness and isolation and the latter part celebrating reconnection following,…
