Arcade Fire Reflektor Pirate

Win Butler is always up for a fight – even if it’s with his audience. “I remember we were on the Suburbs tour,” Butler is saying one afternoon in New York, “and we got booked at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. We’d already played Switzerland a couple times, and we’d made a rule we were never gonna do it again. The shows were so awful, and the people were just so rich and spoiled.“So we showed up at Montreux, which we didn’t realize was in Switzerland. And it was the worst fucking audience we’ve ever played for. People were giving nothing.

Just a black hole. So I started pushing. Before every song, I was like, ‘. And this is the last time we’ll play this song in Switzerland!‘ Just trying to get a rise.”Onstage, have a reputation for feel-good positivity. But Butler often describes their shows as a confrontation. Even “Wake Up,” the triumphant, show-closing number that helped make them heroes to a generation of indie-rock fans, started out as what Butler has called a “fuck-you song” – it was meant to grab the audience by the throat and force them to pay attention. Tonight, don’t have to work at getting anybody’s attention.

It’s just after 5 p.m., four hours until showtime, but kids are already lined up around the block for the band’s gig, under the alias the Reflektors, at a dilapidated warehouse in industrial Brooklyn. Butler – wearing a black Public Enemy T-shirt and an old-timey Pittsburgh Pirates cap – is gigantic in person: A few months ago, when he played with at a concert in Montreal, and came up roughly to his sternum, and when Arcade Fire performed on SNL in September, host Tina Fey jokingly compared him to “a Serbian basketball player” and “some kind of hipster Paul Bunyan.”. Arcade Fire are kicking off a series of appearances in support of their fourth album, which will be released 10 days later. Over the next two and a half weeks they’ll appear on the YouTube Music Awards, The Colbert Report and at five shows at the kind of undersize clubs and warehouses that they outgrew nearly a decade ago. “The idea was to play these like they were our first shows ever,” Butler says.

To get back to basics – a tempting possibility for a band that’s much bigger than it ever thought it would be. In 2014, Arcade Fire have fully assumed their place in the pantheon, welcomed by some of rock’s all-time greats. Is a friend, and he appears in one of their videos. Gives them personalized advice. (Butler: “One of the things he told us was ‘Play Italy.' ”) appears on their single “Reflektor.” This spring, the band will embark on a nationwide arena tour that will find the six-piece Canadian crew bringing its grandiose art project to the likes of the KFC Yum!

Center.Such are the spoils of being one of the most successful bands on the planet, which Arcade Fire have been since at least February 2011, when their third album, won a Grammy for Album of the Year, beating out favorites, and Katy Perry. A befuddled Barbra Streisand, presenting the award, thought “The Suburbs” was the name of the band; Butler seemed to express the confusion of most of America when he stepped to the mic and said, “What the hell?”. Butler is unapologetic about his managerial style. He half-jokingly refers to the crew as his “staff,” and compares his role to that of a director on a film set. “When you make Lord of the Rings, maybe there’s 500 people building an Orc village that costs $10 million, and it ends up on the editing floor,” he says. “That fucking sucks if you were working on that village for six months – but I’m still cutting the Orc village.” That said, he adds, “I don’t think for a second that I could do this without everyone else.

Because it’s so much bigger than the sum of its parts.”Butler and Chassagne sit down to lunch at their favorite Miami restaurant, a Haitian place in South Beach called Tap Tap. Chassagne grew up poor in a suburb of Montreal, the daughter of two Haitian immigrants, and the band has made Haiti its cause. Chassagne co-founded a non­profit called Kanpe – Creole for “Stand Up” – that helps rural Haitians access education and medical care. One dollar/euro/pound from every ticket the group sells goes to a Haitian-aid organization called Partners in Health.Chassagne digs into the feast on the table: pork fritters, roasted goat, sole fillet, rice, beans and corn bread. She clearly doesn’t like to be interviewed, as if explaining things about herself or her music will ruin the magic. As a girl, Chassagne was a music prodigy who taught herself to play part of a Mozart symphony by ear on an old electric organ she found in the family’s basement.

But when she studied music in college (it was her second degree, after one in communications), she quit for reasons oddly similar to Butler’s.“Class was driving me crazy,” Chassagne says. “You have to write all these assignments, but what are you supposed to do with this piece of shit music you composed just for the assignment?

In my third year the teacher was like, ‘OK, for next Thursday write me a 12-bar blues,’ and I was like, ‘I’m done!’ There’s enough 12-bar blues in the world. I’ve got other things to do.”Chassagne and Butler met at McGill University in 2001.

Around the same time, he saw her sing jazz at an art gallery and asked her to play with him; thinking he was just hitting on her, she blew him off. She says he called her five times before finally talking her into coming to play with him, at which point she put on her ugliest jeans and made sure her hair was a mess. But they wrote a song together that night, went on their first real date soon after ( Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), got engaged at a New Year’s Eve party, and were married in the summer of 2003 at a maple farm near Montreal. The following year, Arcade Fire’s first album came out. After soundcheck, Butler spends a while playing ping-pong with his guitar tech, Tyler Messick. Butler, a fierce competitor with a wicked serve, tells him frequently to “get that shit out of here.” During one game, he lunges so hard that he splits his pants.

Messick says Butler really hates to lose: “He’ll cheat, he’ll change the score. He’ll even flip over the table.”Messick and Butler met five or six years ago, playing hoops at the Montreal YMCA. “He gets in fights almost every time we play,” Messick says.

“He’s an instigator – I have to hold guys back every time. He gets his aggression out on the court. He doesn’t take criticism very well. But he can dominate a room like no one else.”Also hanging out backstage is Scott Rodger, the band’s manager. If Arcade Fire have become unlikely rock gods, Rodger, who also manages Paul McCartney, deserves a big part of the credit. He came on board a few months after the release of the band’s debut LP, Funeral, and immediately set about negotiating better deals.

As a result, Arcade Fire is a business that’s been profitable almost since Day One. They paid for their first EP with money from their shows, and insisted on keeping their publishing rights when they signed their first label deal. And after Funeral became a smash, it ensured they would never need to take money from a record label again.Unlike, say, U2 – who might receive a $50 million advance but never see another penny from record sales – Arcade Fire pay for everything upfront. Reflektor, for instance, cost $1.6 million to make, according to Rodger – a hefty increase over the $500,000 they spent on The Suburbs. But because the band doesn’t outsource much to its record company – the tiny indie label Merge – it also gets a much bigger cut of the profits.

As Rodger says, “We wanted to figure out a way to sell a million records, but get paid like we sold 4 million. And we did.”Frustrated by what they thought was a failure to capitalize on their Grammy win, Arcade Fire also brought in some muscle for this album. Reflektor is being distributed through the giant Universal Music Group. When The Suburbs debuted at Number One, Laura Ballance – the co-founder of Merge – laughed it off. “The whole chart thing is kind of like sports,” she told the Los Angeles Times. But here’s the thing: Butler really likes sports.

They start to play it, a slow, melancholy number with a simple minor-key structure. It really does sound like a Neil Young song:I had a dream and I woke up singingI was playing in a band with my friendsSince I was young, I always dreamed aboutPlaying in a band with my friendsThese days the band members all still live within about 10 minutes of one another in Montreal. They live pretty modestly: Butler and Chassagne are in the same house they bought after Funeral, driving the same old Volvo.

Until very recently, Parry still drove a 1989 Camry – a hatchback, so he could fit his bass in it. (Once he got stopped at the border on his way back from New York with a bunch of platinum plaques, and the customs officers made fun of him for being in Arcade Fire and driving a Toyota.)“The longer we’re a band, the more painfully obvious it becomes why most bands don’t last,” Parry says backstage. “It’s probably the nature of anything that starts out small and self-directed, and becomes larger and in danger of not being self-directed.”Back onstage, Butler sings the last verse:Late at night, when the house is quietSometimes I think about the endWhat will I remember from the yearsI was playing in a band with my friends?The next day, the band flies to Los Angeles, and Butler decides he wants to play basketball.

Together we drive from his hotel in West Hollywood to the east side, where a friend of a friend supposedly has a regular pickup game. Butler is dressed in size 15 Nikes and a throwback purple Utah Jazz jersey (No. 7 – “Pistol” Pete Maravich). He played center on the basketball team at Exeter, although he wasn’t a starter until the end of his senior year. “I’m way better now,” he says.

“I was always treated as a post player, because I’m tall, but in my twenties I realized that I could actually shoot. So I’m much more of a scorer now.” (There seems to be a metaphor in there somewhere.) He says, only half-jokingly, he’s hoping to get to play in the NBA Celebrity All-Star Game this year.We pull up to the gym, a dingy-looking rec center in the heart of Chinatown.

Out front, some old ladies in sweatpants are doing tai chi. Inside, Butler is one of only two non-Asians, and also the only person taller than five feet 10.

He says hi to his friend’s friend, but nobody else seems to recognize him. The teams are set, lights against darks, and everybody takes their places on the court.

On the first possession, Butler pulls up at the top of the key and drains a three-pointer. The next possession, he does it again. The next one he brings the ball downcourt and dishes a nifty behind-the-back pass to a teammate, who goes in for an easy layup, and then Butler pulls up and sinks another three. Just like that, Butler’s team is up 11-0, and he’s responsible for all 11 points.By the second game, the other team starts double-teaming him, but Butler keeps attacking, ignoring an open man and driving into the paint for another bucket. Then they begin triple-teaming, and Butler gets frustrated. “Come on, guys – we gotta box out better!” he shouts.

“They’re killing us on the rebounds!” Still, thanks to some strong post play, his team ekes out another victory.The next game Butler sits. Then, back in for game four, he opens with another three-pointer. But pretty soon the frustration is back.

On one early possession, his team turns it over and the other team scores. Butler punches a blue mat on the wall, hard. A few minutes later, he tussles for a loose ball and jams his finger. “Motherfucker!” he screams, coming to the sideline to tape it up.

I need this thing for work!”When Butler goes back in, he’s full-on pissed. “Grab that fucking ball!” he shouts as his team loses another rebound. “How many are they gonna fucking get? Fuck!” A minute later it happens again, and the other team drives down and scores. Butler screams again.

“That’s six in a row! It’s fucking pathetic!” “Dude, calm down,” one of his teammates says finally. “Everyone’s on the same team.”“But they’re getting every fucking rebound!” protests Butler.The guy smiles. “Dude, you’re six inches taller than everyone else.

If you can’t get them, no one is going to.”. The joke seems to calm him down a bit. For the rest of the game, Butler switches to cheerleader mode. “Come on, guys! We’re in this! Play hard!” They still lose, 21-19, but afterward, Butler is in better spirits.

“Thanks, guys,” he says as he peels off his jersey and dons a tie-dyed Ramones tee. “I’m sorry I’m so mouthy. I don’t mean anything by it. I don’t know how else to play.”One of the guys asks him to stick around for one more game. Butler says he can’t, but they’re welcome on the court in Montreal anytime. He says goodbye and turns to leave, but then stops just short of the door.“Seriously, though,” he says with a grin. “Twelve points from rebounds.”A day later, the band plays a big record-release concert in front of the Capitol Records building that’s broadcast on MTV and ABC.

Traffic on Vine Street is shut down, and hundreds of fans spill out into the roadway. The group seems energized playing for a big crowd after so many small shows.

But before one song, Butler goes on a funny little riff. “Sometimes you’re in a band,” he says, “and you put out an album, and you just want to play songs, you know? But sometimes things get so. complicated.”On Arcade Fire’s final night in Los Angeles, they play a show at the Hollywood Palladium, an Art Deco theater on Sunset Boulevard. Several of their Hollywood friends are here; Chassagne’s dad drove in too. Butler also has a personal reason to be excited. “My grandpa used to play here,” he says backstage. “Multiple times.”Reflektor had come out two days earlier, and most of the reviews were positive.

But the one that got the most attention, in The Washington Post, was definitely not. “Look, I’m sure they’re very nice people,” the review began, “but on their fourth album. Arcade Fire still sound like gigantic dorks with boring sex lives.”“Yeah, I read it,” Butler says, frowning.

Arcade Fire Reflektor Meaning

“I don’t want to say it was racist – but it was mildly uneducated.” He was particularly annoyed by the three jokes about the band’s new bongos, pointing out (rightly) that a professional music critic should know they were congas. He also says, not unfairly, that there may be some sour grapes: “The guy who wrote it played in a band that we used to open for. It seems like a little bit of a conflict of interest.”.

Arcade Fire Reflektor Amazon

Arcade Fire‘s patchy last album Reflektor might not have been for everyone, but their score for Spike Jonze’s acclaimed new movie Her sets them well back on track. Oddly enough, the Reflektor and the Her score we conceived somewhat simultaneously – album track ‘Supersymmetry’ was written specifically for the film – but Her also features plenty of original music. Helped out by regular collaborator Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy), the material shimmers beautifully alongside Jonze’s sombre and oftentimes chilling statement on love in the digital age.Jonze explained that Arcade Fire simultaneously worked on the score and Reflektor, and that “Supersymmetry” was originally written with the film in mind. “Win Butler and I started talkingabout the score about two years ago, and then it kinda seemed like the record sort of informed the soundtrack and the soundtrack informed the record a little bit, and there’s like a song on Reflektor—the last one, ‘Supersymmetry’—that he wrote for the movie, but then it sort of became something else. It’s actually the last song in the end credits.”Her stars Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls in love with an intelligent computer operating system named Samathana (voiced by Scarlett Johansson). When it came to the soundtrack, Jonze said they wanted “for it not to feel synthetic, but to feel like hand-made, but still have an electricity to it, and also just to sort of play this sort of romance and love story and longing of Phoenix's character Theodore.”.