Arcade Fire this week shared some details about its forthcoming album, WE.
Set to drop on May 6, it is the first collection of new music from the Montreal band since 2017’s Everything Now and its sixth studio album.
WE’s seven songs were recorded in New Orleans, El Paso and on Maine’s Mount Desert Island, and produced by Nigel Godrich, who has helmed virtually all of Radiohead’s albums, with Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Régine Chassagne.
In a statement, Butler explained the album’s title was inspired by a book his grandmother read to him when he was a child “that had the word ‘WE’ stamped into its cover in broken 1920s gold leaf. … I wondered… What is ‘WE’? Who are ‘WE’?”
Arcade Fire previewed the album by releasing “The Lightning I, II” along with a video directed by Emily Kai Bock.
Chassagne and bandmates Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Gara all hail from Canada. Butler and his brother Will were born in California and raised in Texas (Win, who is married to Chassagne, became a dual citizen in 2019.)