Win Butler

00:00:08 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, which you can find a link to in the show notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right. Enjoy the episode. It's been ten years since Arcade fires exceptional third album, The Suburbs, earned a Grammy for Album of the Year. It's a distinction that helps catapult the quirky indie rock band from Montreal into one of the biggest bands and the world that's ready to start from the Suburbs. With the string of chart topping conceptual albums and a live show that's arguably unmatched by any other modern rock band. Arcade Fire's genius can be attributed to their tireless work ethic, a collective musical mastery, and lead singer Win Butler's total surrender to an elusive musical spirit. Win Butler spoke with Rick Rubin from his home studio in New Orleans, where he lives with his wife and band member Regine Chassan. When describes the night he and Regine wrote the first songs together, explains why he set out to be the weak link in the band. Why the only place he would ever talk to Bob Dylan is side stage at an arcade fire show. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Ruben's conversation with Win Butler. What's happening? Man? Hello? Hello? Where are you? I'm in New Orleans? Oh nice? How long have you lived there? Five years or something? How's it been? I love it? It's funny. Or like when COVID started, I started watching like New Orleans films because I like miss New Orleans, miss New Orleans so much. It's like, even though I live here, I'm like, it's a manzie And how much of the city is just in the people? Yeah? How did you choose to move there? So Regie, my wife who's in the band, my partner is her family from Haiti and she grew up in Montreal, so she's sort of Francophone Haitian. And when we were working on the Suburbs, we did a road trip from Houston to New Orleans and we sort of got to we kind of got to near Lafayette, like the kind of like creole zydeco country, and we went to these like clubs, these little zydeco clubs, and it's like all black kids singing in French. And she understood everything from the Haitian side and the Quebec side and were just like like this weird family tree sort of thing. And I grew up in Houston, so it's sort of like, I don't know, we both feel really at home here. For it's like just feels like our natural place. Is the Haitian connection stronger even than in Montreal. There's a lot more Haitians in Montreal, like there's more of a community and culture, but the kind of spiritual like the old like you kind of have all this eighteen hundreds Haitian culture here that's like kind of like really deep more this spiritual spiritual piece of it is really strong here, beautiful. What's your connection to spirituality or do you have any or have you ever had any? I kind of like my parents, my mom's my mom's family. So my grandfather was Alvino Ray, who was a big band leader. He was actually one of two jazz guitarists in New York City, like in the twenties. He was like one of the first people that played jazz on a guitar, and my grandmother was a singer and the King Sisters, and so my mom kind of grew up in this musical like very musical family. They were on television like musical Overload. My mom's a harpist, jazz harpist. And my dad's family is from Maine, like they're like boat like island people, like Harvard academic East Coast sort of people. And my mom my mom's family's Mormon, but I kind of call them like Martini Mormons, like they were like jazz Mormons. You know. I kind of grew up exposed like going to Mormon church, but my dad never went, and my dad was like completely agnostic and like kind of like have fun guys sort of vibe. And then as I kind of got older, I went away to boarding school and I ended up like I studied my degrees actually in religious studies, because I ended up sort of in philosophy. And then the more I studied philosophy, the more I realized it all just kind of came back to the Bible. Anyway. I was like, well, at least I should at least understand what this shit is talking about, because like that's what all of Western culture is referencing. I don't know there were there is. I mean, music is a spirit, like that is what it is, and that's one of the things that brought me to New Orleans. It's like, you really don't feel like a crazy person feeling that way, because like it's self evident. But I think it's become my spirituality has become very churchless and very kind of like, you know more. I've studied a lot of different stuff, but I probably know more about the Bible than I should. Do you think it's informed your songwriting? Yeah, definitely. I mean I think it enables you to be kind of crazy enough to think of it as a vocation, which, even even if you're full of shit, at least it gives you a purpose. Let's talk about the difference between how a song would come about on the last album versus the first album. On the first album, might it be acoustic guitar, singing, playing and finding a song? Would it start with lyrics? What would be your typical process then most recently versus traditionally? So the song everything Now was I was actually I started I started Djane, we did a record with James Murphy and and I kind of started actually listening to music and clubs, and like I remember hearing Doctor Dre in a club for the first time, and I was like, what the fuck, that's what that shit sounds like. I had no fucking idea, and you're like, oh shit, Like I knew it was great, but I didn't know that that's what it sounded like. You know. So it's like when you hear what it sounds like and you start to get the production connection between the speaker is the last It's like you're making some shit that hits the speaker, and the speaker is actually what's doing the last bit of the word. And so I was actually working on a remix. There's a Francis Bay bass song called Coffee Kola that's like kind of this beautiful pigmy flute. It's like kind of a beatbox. It's this French African singer. And as I was working on the remix, I started playing all these different chords over this little loop and I just started singing a melody that was completely unrelated to the song and it was just its own song. It took me minute to even realize it was a song because I wasn't thinking. I didn't I'd never hadn't really worked on sample based music before, and it was like it felt like a like a tool. I don't know, the way that playing the guitar felt for me, like when I was fifteen. It felt like that. It was like it was like, oh wait, this is just a tool, like any other tool, but it was like the melody and the lyrical point of view and everything was like all there. But then even just to accept that it was a song took like six months. We ended up working with Tomah from Daft Punk, and we did we did the big session for that record in his studio in Paris, which is like the most amazing studio I've ever been in. It's amazing, And we actually got Francis Baby's son, who plays the same instrument, to come to the studio to play with us, and so we didn't actually end up using the sample and so we're like kind of like thinking about it very cerebrally and just like oh, like, I don't know, I feel like there's this very PC like is this appropriative to us an Africans, Like I don't, it's like this MPR think or some shit. And then Patrick Baby walks in the room with his flute and we play in the song and he's like almost like weeping and just like starts playing the song with us, and I was like, no, this is fucking what's up, you know, and like just I don't know. So that was like a really beautiful, really long process where it took almost like a year or to even realize it was a song or something. Amazing was the last album the first album that that experience happened totally. I mean that that was the first time I would have ever been I mean, since I was much younger where I would have even really been I don't know, even the idea of remixing something or like kind of changing the context of something as a thing that would have spent time on, I wouldn't have been practicing that. That's I feel like I'm just constantly trying to feel like an amateur. It's like you just like I don't know what it's like. The first time I heard Nirvana, my takeaway was like I don't need to play a guitar solo, Like I like my least was like fuck a guitar solo. Not that guitar solos aren't great, but I'm just like, there's it was more just like wanting to feel like like I never really learned to play the guitar. I've never really gotten any better at any instrument. Like I've almost like studiously maintained my amateur noss so I can like pick something up being like how does this work? And so that becomes sort of part of the process. And I just everyone in my band is smarter than me and better at every instrument, Like I wanted to be in a band with wherever I was the weak link musically or something. I don't know, like like I like the people that I've When I met Regie, I was like, oh, you're smart at me about everything, So like you just want to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Did you guys start in a relationship or did you start in the band and be come together? How what was the timing of it? It was the same. I went to Sarah Lawrence College, which is like super like post art school, like outside of New York City. It was like seventy thirty female to male. Jordan Peel was actually in my class, and I got there and I was just like I just spent all my time making four track recordings and like not going to class and I was just like, this is stupid. So I basically dropped out and started a BAM with my high school friend and then sort of ended up moving to Montreal. I actually never even thought about Canada. Yeah, I wasn't like I'm gonna move to Canada one day or like, it wasn't really I didn't know shit about Montreal. I didn't even really know that it was French, really like really like I knew, but I didn't like, no, no, because you're American, so of course, how would you know. We don't learn, We don't learn that. I grew up in Texas. I took Texas history, like I can tell you about the fucking Battle of San Jacento, but like I don't know anything about European history, like you know. So yeah, so I was just like this idiot American and like moving to Cannon in the winter, just like fuck, it's fucking gold here, like what's going on? And I would just I would. I would go to the music to McGill, to the music school and just hang out outside the drummer rooms trying to find a drummer, just listen to people practice drums for like hours. And I was in the cafeteria and Regime was actually studying jazz at at McGill. She's like, who the fuck is this six foot five guy in a cowboy hat, Like he definitely doesn't go to school here. And I saw her and I went up to her and I was describing to her like the kind of music I wanted to make, and and she I think she was suspicious of like you know, she was like, uh, I mean I said all things that she would have been in. I probably said like like it would have been like Neil Young the Pixies, classical music, fucking you know, radiohead, Like it would have been like a weird hodgepodge of whatever I was into. She was like, well, I might know someone who plays drums. She gave me your number and she never called me back or anything. And then I happened to be at an art opening at the art school and she was singing like like she had like a jazz trio that she was singing for like a baronessage like for a art opening. And I saw her singing, I was like, I went up to her afterwards. I was like, we have to play music together, like I'm gonna call you again. And she came over to my apartment and I played her a bunch of songs and she was like, oh shit, this guy is not full of shit. Like you know, I don't even remember what I played her, but we ended up writing a couple of songs like that night, and it was pretty much like that was it. You know, we were kind of I mean, it took a long time to put it all together, but from there it was just like we were just sort of in it, you know. And now it's twenty twenty and you have a kid. You have a kid, and it's a global pandemic. And he moved and he moved back to the states Man. He told me I would move back to the South. I was like, get the fuck out of here. I'm going as far as I can't, Like, I'm going to fucking Montreal, like fu fuck Texas. But and now ironically we're planning on going back to Texas to make the next record during the elections. So that'll be fun. We'll be back after a quick break. We're back with Rick Rubin and Wynn Butler, who were the other big inspirations for you. Actually, I found I found recently a flyer that we put up in Montreal. When we were looking for musicians, we were kind of looking for We had the band, but we were looking for orchestral musicians. We were looking for like I don't know, like a violinist or or someone who played woodwins or we just wanted some other color in the band. And it was like we listed ore. It was like this funny flyer that Regia and I made and I'm trying to remember it was on there, but it was like the Pixies, Debuc Neil Young, Motown and Dylan those that was was on the list, like looking for orchestral musicians with like those influences, you know. And I'm I'm like, it's pretty like a new order, a new order that was the other vand and when I look at our shit, I'm like pretty on point, Like that's pretty much. That's sort of like the it's a big it's actually a really big sandbox to play with, like if you stretch the edges of those. And then the other piece is really like Caribbean music and Haitian music and like and that sort of poll of Regime's background, and then in there it's like it's almost too much. I'm just like, oh, too much, real estate in here. What would be the electronic music that has come in since that gets added? I mean I would say that, you know, for me, like Radiohead and Bork Buyork is like to me like Bowie Incarnate, like you know, talk about not give you a fuck and just being like sticking to your guns and shit, Like I I feel like York slaughters, you know, she's so fucking tough and hardcore. I mean, I guess like kid A and Homogenic and like those records would have been, those would have been deep in there. I mean, I feel like kraft Work is probably the most there is no modern music without Kraftwork. That's like the if you triangulate all EDM and hip hop and every like craft Works the fucking and who would think this weird German minimalist electronic group is like But they're at the crossroad of all of it. You know, if they got like a tenth of a penny on all that shit they like, they should, you know, they should be buildings in Berlin with the Craftwork logo on them and the fact that it's as funky as it is considering how coldly programmed it is, it makes no fucking sense. I don't. I still don't quite understand it. But I mean it's like the funkiness is in the space because it's like actually realized that would kneel some of Neil shit, like the swing even he always the same beat, but if it's it's more of a soul it's actually a slowed down it's like you're playing soul music but really Stone like it's actually there is actually like a kind of funky swing to the ship that he does. It's not just a straight thing. There's a little bit of a lilt to it. Like the thing in New Orleans which is so amazing is that all the there's all the second line music, which is like people like normally today, if it wasn't COVID, I would hear there'd be a band in the street and people just go through the neighborhood and drink, and you follow the band around and you either play kick drum snare or you play you play kick drum with a with a with a high hat symbol with a screwdriver that's like one instrument, and then or you play the snare or you play and so if you if you're a kit drummer from New Orleans, you started monophonically just playing the kick or just playing the snare, and so the dude, but everything so spread out physically that in order to play in the pocket, the pocket is really slow and behind. Everything's really behind because because the physical distance, there's latency between the tuba and the kick drum and whatever. So the pocket is like this like super behind. Like you're like, how the funk this possibly groove and it like it's the exact point where it grooves. And then if you learn to play the kit after you're coming from a monophonic kick drum, and then you're putting it together. And that's why all those New Orleans, like all the La Studio dudes, like there's New Orleans dudes are just like because they played the fucking kick drum for like five years before they learn how to play the kit, and then you put it together, and so you're thinking about it as these different instruments as opposed to one instrument, and like and then you hear people some of these old dudes play at the Preservation Hall and I'm like watching this dude, he's like ninety years old, loading out his own kid at the end of the night, and I'm watching and play, I'm like, who the fuck is that guy? And he's like, oh, he played on every Ray Charles record, like like he just like the fucking most. Like I'm almost like crying just watching him play this traditional song, and it's like, Oh, that's why, that's that's what's up. Isn't it remarkable that you can hear you don't have to know any backstory, and you hear it and you know, oh, this is different than everything else, and it's something else music a million times, but I'm like, but that dude, who the fuck is that dude? It's like, oh, he's one of the best drummers in the world. Who ever lived? That? No one's ever heard of? Who does you know? I can remember I was listening to a station of I know very little about classical music. I like classical music and I listened to it a lot, but I know very little about it. And I was listening and a piece came on that just felt better, not written better, not even necessarily performed better, but there was something about It's like, oh, this is different than everything that's played all day. And then I find out who does the arrangement and it turns out to be this guy at clauds Argerment, and I asked some friends of mine who know about this stuff. He's like, oh, of course, clouds Arga. It's of course he's the master. He's the guy who taught everybody. So it's like you can hear it. It's um, it's innate in the in the dna of it, that that energy. Yeah, but most of us just feel it. So it's like you feel sad and you don't know why or you like you just feel like it just it just gets it out of you. Regine. Regine is like I mean, she grew up none of her family's musical, but she she's just a savant who like taught herself to play Mozart when she was five in the basement on a weird or Like she's just like one of these can play any instrument. She started playing drums like two weeks before we started recording Funeral, and she plays drums on half that record, like she'd never played a drum kid, and she's like, I can play a drum kid, give me the drums. Um. But she's studied composition, she was at McGill, studied classical music. But she has this like kind of she'll hear and it's like the arrange the performance of the orchestra, and she's like, fuck, it's like nails on a chalkboard because she knows like all the minutia of like the feeling. It's not just the notes on the page. It's like it's like the conducting and how it's played and like all that shit is like where the soul of it is. But I'm just sort of like fantasious school, Like I'm just like I really like Fantasia, you know, like any any shows that you can remember throughout your life that really impressed or inspired you live. I didn't really go to any show when I was a kid. I was in the suburbs of Houston. If you can't drive, you can't do shit in Houston, like like until you can drive, it's like you're a prisoner. And shows would come through town and I would like read them out in the paper. I'm like, man, I wish I could figure out how to get to that. I just I couldn't figure it out. And then I went to boarding school and that was like not shows, you know. It was like I played in a cover band and there were bands on campus and ship, but wasn't like I was going to shows. So for me, like when I moved to Montreal, that was really my first like real punk rock music scene. And there's a band in Montreal called wolfridd and we played with them the first time they ever played their first show. They just moved from Vancouver and they were on the bill and I was in the bathroom and I was just like hearing it through the wall and I was like, Oh, what the fuck is that? And that was like the first band I heard there where I was like, we gotta get our ship together. And so like there was a band called The Unicorns. There's a band called the Hidden Cameras. It's like a queer like fifteen piece queer kind of folk band, and they would only play in porn theaters and it was like kind of sounded like almost like Christian religious music but like all about golden showers, and like, man, I'll put I'll put that band up against ninety percent of the shit I've seen on planets, Like you just you're like you're assaulted by how mediocre your ship is, like because they were just like just like going so fucking hard. There was a lot of like really people really doing it and being on the ground. I don't know, I feel like some of that's lost. I don't even know how you would ever do anything if you're not constantly ashamed at how whack your shit is. You just get your feed off the energy of how good other people are. Got to I mean you, I mean you've got to. Like I've met so many my heroes in my life, and I've never met Bob Dylan. But I was like, I would never want to meet Bob Dylan ever unless he was side stage of our show and I'd be like, nice to meet you, mister Dylon. But like, I have no fucking interest in like just cold meeting Bob Dylan. Like I remember, like, oh I played in a band, like like I'm good, you know, like on Neon Bible on our second record, I was obsessed. Do you ever get to meet Bob Johnson before he passed? He was the producer who did what all the Dylan shit Johnny Cash Live at folsome Willie Nelson in Leonard Cohen to me, Bob Johnson, like if you look at his discography, that's like no one fucks with Bob john Like to me, I'm like, that's the holy Grail. Incredible and so he came out to Montreal. We were working on the record, and he was like Willie Nelson, but who didn't take the drugs as well. He was out of his fucking mind, like completely out of it. But we were working on a song called My Body as a Cage and he sort of like sits up and he's like, my Body's a cage and like he'd like love the song my Body's a Cage, and like was really just like, yes, this that is a holy thing that you're working on. And and then he was sort of out of it, you know, but he was like, I'm shocked that the song that gets mentioned is that song, because at the end of his interview, I was going to say, my favorite song of yours is my Body as a Cage And would it be okay for us to listen to it and talk about it because I love that song. Um, do you mind if we listen to it? If you would have written that song sooner, there is no question in my mind that Johnny Cash would have sung that song and it would have been mind blowing. Yeah, there's definitely some room sound on that motherfucker. Yeah, tell me the story of the song. It's interesting It's like I was sort of transported. I haven't really listened to it in a while. But I don't really know Brandon Flowers from The Killers, but he's Mormon. We both playing these giant bands. We've met each other airports a couple of times, and I reached out to him recently just to be like, keep going, man, I really appreciate your record and keep keep doing it. And he was like, he was like, I remember meeting you on Funeral and you had this little keyboard, and I remember thinking, man, this guy's writing music on tour, I should really work harder. And like I had this little cassio cassio keyboard on the Funeral tour that had a sampler and the whole tour. I brought it with me and I would we were in a we were in a sprinter van. I would sit in the back with headphones for like nine hours driving across Texas, like to the next gig, and I would play this fucking thing for two years. And that's the only song I wrote in that entire two year period that that was the only one. And I remember singing it in the shower of like some fucking Motel six somewhere in the desert and then the car broke down somewhere in Arizona and I was sitting on the curb with the headphones on. I just figured out how it went, and I was like, regime, I wrote one like I got I have this, you know, and just sitting like just sweating, like it's like evening that I'm sitting on this weird curb. It's like literally the smallest sound. I was playing the littlest fucking thing, this little keyboard, and it sounded like what we just heard in my head. But it was like literally the smallest thing. And then like maybe a year and a half later, we cut it, and so like we cut it the backing band when Bob Johnston was there in this church we bought outside of Montreal, like an hour outside of Montreal, and then we cut it live on this I found it. I found this little church. It actually wasn't the church we owned. It was another church that had a pipe organ in it, but it wasn't the right pipe organ sound. And I found it's like one of the giant this giant cathedral in Montreal that like you play and there's like an eight second delay, like giant fucking thing. I just I want to something that feels like the way it sounds when you walk into a church and you really hear it. And we had this engineer. It was this like really like indie rock kind of cold dude. And I remember finishing it in the echo for like ten seconds afterwards, and I looked at me. He was crying. It was like crying, like just from the physical It was so fucking loud in the room, like the bass and everything. It was like the loudest sound I've ever heard. Did you sing it and play it live? No, it's the organ. I sang it live in that other room, and then we overdubbed the organ, and and there's French horn that don't like, there's this kind of um that was recorded in the same church, like from like one hundred feet away, like just horns echoing in this giant cathedral. What about the rhythm track. The rhythm track is um. I think it's regime playing the drums. Like the whole first half of the track is just organ and drums and just regime playing like kind of like I remember that her reference point was Prince. Maybe I'm just stuck my mother, do Like there's that sort of rhythm underlying it, and then it just sort of opens up and everything's on eleven. They're just like I remember kind of taking some shit on that record for it being so Bombat's like, so like, how pretentious to make something bombastic? And I was like, motherfucker, like this shit's not bombastic enough, like like it it's fun. I would have never I would have never noticed the Win Doves Cry reference on the drums. But when you say it's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, but not obviously not the same production, but yeah. But it's interesting how a reference point, even a super well known reference point, when you change the context of it, turns into completely new music. Any memories about the lyrics at all. When I hear myself saying on those really the first two records, I was ill. I was like I had a chronic I had chronic sinus infections and I would basically be sick for four months at a time. My voice is just fucking shredded, you know, like, and I would just scream every note of every song from beginning to end every night. But I was really like not well, and even at the end of Funeral, I was still sick. We launched the on Bible and we were in Sweden or something. We went to play the show and just like like nothing, no sound like my voice, like I've never had that before. We had to cancel the whole tour, like I could, like not a whisper of sound came out of my voice. And so I feel like my body as a cage was like just like you're just being suffocated by your life. It was just like I had like my body wasn't my own, and I'm doing what I've always dreamed of doing on planet Earth and it's fucking hell, but like but it's also my wildest dream, you know. But it wasn't like later it got fun. It got once. You know, once you have money and you're staying at nice hotels and it's like a little bit cushier. But like there was no nuance to what we were doing. We were like it was war Like every show was like we're at war with the audience. It wasn't like a Kumbaya sort of shit. It was like we're trying to fucking kill Like you're not gonna be like, oh what was that band? Like we were like we were coming to kill you every night, you know, like I don't care if there's three people like we're at eleven, you know, and which is it's great when you're when you're young. And I didn't even drink or anything then, So I can't even imagine how I would have done it if I was like higher some shit. How did you end up solving the infection issue? I got a sinus surgery and they kind of opened I had like one side that wasn't drained. They opened it up, and then afterwards my dad was like, oh, yeah I had that too, and so do your brother. I was like, fuck, Dad, like I've been sick for like three years, Like you could have hit me that. It was like a completely like genetic It's like, yeah, I had that surgery a lot. It was like, have you noticed that I've been ill for forever? We'll be back with Winn Butler and Rick Rubber. Here's the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with Wynn Butler. Are you are you writing and working towards whatever the next project is going to be? Yeah, we were. We It depends on the record, but at least a year or more pretty much full time before we start even demoing stuff. We've been writing for a year and we're doing our first session towards the record when when kind of COVID came down and so like it was it felt like sort of like being on the on the roller coaster and it goes up and like you you're going into it and it's like exactly then once your your body's already going like there was, there's no stopping it. So I've just been writing, like I can't remember a time where I've written more, just like it feels like being eighteen, Just like sitting in a piano for five days in a row and working on a melody for a verse and shit like that. It's pretty It's been pretty amazing, actually really beautiful time. Great. Do you feel like, had had the situation been different, you would already be in recording mode based on the year previous of writing, we would have been kind of get and towards wrapping up I think of finishing an album. Yeah, So instead we just wrote two or three coming about how the last album was different than all that came before them. For you, I mean, it sort of feels like the way we do it, we're kind of a new band every single time. It's like we take so much time in between that it's like almost like we've forgotten to play our instruments. It's like we're remembering how to be a band, and we kind of end up building. We really build a studio pretty much every record. And the last record we had just moved to New Orleans and I spent a lot of time in Haiti and Jamaica, and we used to we used to have a studio and a church, and then over the years, like the space has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, and so our new studio is like maybe three hundred square feet, but with it's like an old shotgun of like a of an old New Orleans house, like eighteen hundreds house, and it's like sort of like a black arc like Jamaica. Like the console in the corner, we had like fifteen musicians. Everyone's like sweating their ass off and touching each other and sort of like really physically close and just everything's within It's like you're on a boat, so every all the gear is here and the eqs and everything just like immediate. So that was the first time, that was the first record we made in that space. That was really just like the smallest possible space that and that was chosen on purpose to get that feeling. It's just sort of what I was gravitating towards, just like immediacy, and like, um, I remember visiting, like on the first tour we went, we went to the Motown Studio in Detroit. That's like in the basement, and just like how small that space is and they have those uh like on the walls like we're normally like all modern studios have like deadening foam and shit everywhere, and I'm always just like, get me the fuck out of here. I hate this space so much, Like I'm just like, how is the spirit supposed to get into a room where all the windows are hermetically sealed? But the Motown studio had these boards, lacquer boards. They were meant to reflect the sound to make it more exciting, so it bounce off and hit the piano player and hit the drummer so it would be more more feedback and more slap back and brighter, so the fucking musicians play better. Everything is designed now to be separate, like the most separation possible. And I always responded more to like I wanted to hit me so that I sing better or sing differently or I play better. Might it might have something to do with the volume, because I think as bands have gotten louder and louder, with you know, bigger amps and louder stuff, it's harder to control that sound in a space, whereas in the Motown days people played pretty quietly. Even on James Brown records, if you listen, it's like ms barely play yeah. So it's a different it's a different animal. And are the songs on the earlier records. It's clear how the songs would be written in advance and then turn into what we're familiar with on the records. Does it work the same way in the more modern style of production? We always have recorded to tape. Pretty much in the last six months is the first time where I like working on a computer where I'm like, oh, this shit actually sounds just as good to my ear, Like, like it's kind of hit a point where it's not really for sonics anymore. Tape is more for methodology. We're not We've we've certainly jammed a lot a lot over the years. I don't know how many things we've written that way, like probably only a couple things, but you'll end up kind of more for arrangements, like coming up with different ideas and stuff for arrangements. So from the would what would a song look like when you first bring it into the band? So the song exists, the band has not played it before. Now we're going into the studio. What does that process look like? It's been different every time, you know, it depends on the era, you know, Like as I've as we've kind of ended up having a studio in our house, it's really hard not to end up just demoing something to the point where it basically sounds like a record. And then it's just like this like kind of tortuous process of trying to figure out how it works as a band thing or what it is. From my perspective, like the the thing I'm most interested in is the song itself. And you really have no you don't have much say in whether or not you get a song, except for the more time you put in, the better your odds are that you'll be hanging around when some shit shows up. I mean, just you like, if you do it more, you're more likely to be there, Like you can't schedule it. Like the more a part we are and coming back together, it's like, well, okay, well this month, that's when we're gonna get the ship. And it doesn't really work that way because it, like music shows up whenever the fuck it want, so it doesn't give a shit about your life. It's like, my dad's family's from Maine, but actually I have my grandmothers from Hawaii, and I've spent time in Hawaii. And when you're in the ocean in Hawaii, the Pacific doesn't give a shit if you're alive or dead. It doesn't care at all. You're just like the energy I get from that ocean is like your existence is like inconsequential to me. And I feel like music is this comes from the same spirit as that, where it like like it doesn't give a shit about you. But if you're there and you want to, if you want to participate in what it's doing, then you're welcome to participate. But it doesn't really if you're alive or dead. It's gonna find someone else. If you've got other shit going on, it'll be like, Okay, see later, I got someone just got born. I gotta go. You gotta go check them out and see what see what they're thinking about. You know amazing. Tell me about you've so now you're at a point where you might demo up music on the computer and then you figure out how to turn it into the band or tell me, just tell me what's the process? Shit? Man, it just gets complicated because everyone's so spread out. Now my brother lives in Brooklyn, who's in the band of a lot of band members are in Montreal, and then our drummers in Australia actually, which is like extremely inconvenient. That seemed like a reasonable thing even like six it was like, oh, sure, we all live in different points of the globe, and then this shit happens and it just seems absurd. You're like, what, like what are we what were we thinking in the last ten years? But you know, I mean it's like ideally, like I would say, back in the day when we were when we were hurting, like we had a loft, we lived in, our drums were in the living room, we had had band practice, and so the odds that people are around when the shit happens is higher because everyone's hanging out. So it's like, even if you don't play something, if you're there when it's happening, it's still you still feel like you don't need to play on it. You can just you can just be there and kind of like be part of the process. So it's harder to orchestrate that happening, I think with a band. But on the flip side, the band is so fucking great at their instruments, Like everyone's so so much more technically proficient and so such a tight amazing I don't know, I mean, I don't I'm not trying to like toot our horn, but we're not a shitty live band. And and and we've when we play like we're not fucking around, like we're like, if the clash is watching us play, we're not going to be embarrassed, Like we're like, we're like coming, We're going for the throat when we play. So it's like over fifteen years of doing that, it's like we're so the range of what we can express is so much better. So this time around, it's like we've been in lockdown, have a studio, have every keyboard and drum machine and piano and everything I could ever want, and fucking time. So it's like and and the one piece that's been missing is the time, And now the times, like the time is there. So it's like in a way. It feels like a more extreme version of what we would have done anyway. But it's, uh, I don't know if it's been. It's been cool just to really like stay with it and just like I don't know, there's like no magic, no magic thing that's going to come and write the song for you. It's just like it's just you. So it's like figured out. Yeah, are you ever surprised by what comes back as opposed to what you're expecting or what you're looking for? I mean that's that is sort of that is the joy of a band is when it's it's it's better than what you thought it was, you know, and it's different and it's like kind of fleshed out absolutely. I mean that's mostly that is what it is, you know, um, and it's in its best form. We were so hardcore about never editing everything, like back like the first three four records, we wouldn't touch a fucking thing, Like we wouldn't move one piece of drums, and it was just like, no, that's what it is. Like if we couldn't do it, that's what it is. And so I feel like the computer makes it. When I hear most modern music, it feels like I'm listening to editing, like like it's essentially become an art form of editing, which is cool, it is really cool. But it's like it feels like digital digital quilting or something like that doesn't feel like a musical performance. It feels like an editing performance, like an amazing editing. It's the same thing as a big budget film or something when it's just like it's like a magic trick of editing. I was actually sort of realizing this the other day, like the kind of heyday of like fifties and sixties and like some of the music that was really recorded in the room, like is VR. It's VR before VR, And if you if you can hear a room, if you close your eyes, you hear the piano player, you hear the drummer, you can hear the room. And so every time you hear that shit, you're in like Richie Vallen's playing, Like that's why these mediocre recordings from the fifties of like La Bumba and shit, you hear it and you're like, motherfuck because it's like it's a photograph of a thing. So for me, that's still the ship. That is the great song and the best arrangement and has that. To me, that's the shit that list forever, because it's like it's like it actually is a room. I have a slightly different take on it, similar but different. My feeling is if you hear the room that they're in, it doesn't take into account the room you're in, the listener. Yeah, and I want the music to come out of the speakers as if the band was in the room that I'm in, and experience it as if they're here playing for me in my space, because otherwise it's two rooms. It's their room plus my room, and it's confusing to me. No, I that's that's how I feel you. I mean, what you're describing as like is uh. I mean obviously, if you hear a fucking dancing queen that's in the room you're in, like that's in your room, it's not their room, like and that's just like that's that seven just immaculate, guru level shit as well. But there's still like for me, like when I hear like um stand by me or some shit like that, that's the fucking or like Louis Armstrong or whatever, like that's the to me, that's just like what the fuck are you going to say about like that ship will live for a thousand years. I mean now too, it's like we're mixing for this shit, we're mixing for iPhone and like club speakers, and like it's like it's enough to make you insane. How how aware are you of the perception of the work you make after it comes out? Are you wear it all or just you make it and then you move on? Definitely aware? I mean I've always most of the bands that I liked when I was a kid had broken up twenty years before I was listening to them, like I wasn't like in high school, like Radiohead and Byork were like that was that was it for me? Like in terms of the contemporary this came out this week. I bought it this week, But most of the shit I listened to the bands had broken up twenty years before, and so I always had the perspective of, like, how do you even know if any of it's any good until twenty years after it comes out? Like how I've just like read these enemy reviews of like the Clash and whatever and what they're talking it's absurd. You read it and you're like, this is absurd, you know, like, how could anyone take any of this shit seriously? And so I was I was always coming from that perspective where it's like I'm almost like distrustful of a good review, where it's like it's like, oh shit, our ship must not be that good if it is a really funny Rolling Stone put out a collection of everything written about Neil Young in Rolling Stone as a book. Yeah, and you read the review of each album, and every review is terrible, worst. You know, Neil's worst, he's lost, it doesn't know what he's doing. Lost, And then you get to these and then you get to the decade's finest albums, and he's always in the Those same albums are always in their top ten of the best albums of the decade, every consistently, every single time. Yeah, Neil, Neil doesn't give a fuck if like you don't drop out of Crosby Steals in nash if you give a fuck, Like he had a really good thing going, Like just imagine the balls it takes to be like Springfield, Tim Buffalo's Like I'm in two of the biggest bands in the world, Like I'm just gonna go in my basement and like fucking play some shit and like, yeah, Neil is like like that's that's the north Star. I feel like for people who do what I do are just like that's a cold blooded motherfucker. He doesn't give a shit. What's your favorite Neil album? I mean, I love After the gold Rush is probably the one that I've just lived with the most, like it just like it's my favorite. That's my favorite. But I mean Harvest is, like, I mean, what the fuck are you gonna say about Harvest? Like in terms of the like the live needle and the damage done like a live recording, and then the orchestral stuff like that, like the magic trick of that is amazing. Definitely After the gold Rush the one that that's my Like, I'm going to that one. It's it's a pretty magical. It's a pretty magical one. That's That's a record I would love to make and it would be really hard. Like, man, have you seen that? I imagine you've seen the BBC Neil Young from right around that time. I've seen a lot of that shit, but I'm trying to remember which there's a particular film with him playing and he's playing like um old man and man needs a maid and he's playing them for an audience who's never heard them before, and the records are not out yet. Yeah, and it's just the heaviest, most incredible thing you've ever seen. So, I mean, old Man's one of the because we did we did them his charity thing with him a couple of years and hearing him sing that as an old person and thinking like he wrote that at twenty two four when he was old, and it sounds more relevant like now than it did then, that's I mean, that's that's the trick going into the next album. Do you have a clear vision of what the album sounds like or do you have a clear vision of the material? I mean, I know what the song sound like. I don't know what do you? What do you? What would you want our record to sound like? I want to be surprised, and it's always good to be surprised. I like to be surprised. I think you'll be surprised, and I want it to be really good, you know. I care less about the trappings of it and more about it being really good at whatever it is that it is. So I care less about what it is and more about how good of a version of whatever the thing that you decided to be is. I mean, that's the tough It's like, there's not it's hard to you look at role models and people have done it in the past, and it's like it's it's it's interesting. It's like you start to like we were fortunate enough to spend a lot of time with Bowie and and and he sings on a record and got to like really, you know, like I've got to like actually pick his brain. And when he died, it really felt like a planet died or something like. There's like it was like I did not expect like it kind of took me by surprise. I knew it wasn't totally well, but then like someone like that, it was just like it's not about like oh this this record is perfect and all these perfect records. It's just like about the the total commitment, like total and complete commitment to like to art. That's what I think about. It's just like not like not letting what's hard about it, like keep you from the art art of it, you know. But I don't know, I feel it's so lucky just to have a fucking band that's a great band, really good people that I love and and just like being able to fucking I don't know, I feel like I took so much more for granted before this whole global pandemic. I'm just like, I feel so like so much gratitude, but also just like, fuck, if I do I'm getting into a studio asap, there's gonna be a problem. Yeah. Yeah, so you're looking at you're looking forward to the process. I can't wait, Like I just want to fucking sing and feel like an artist and just like feel uninhibited and just like feel it. I just it just feels like there's so much logistics like the world. It's like there's there's like things that used to be you would kind of take for granted or suddenly really complicated. And I can't wait to just be in a room making noises. And I feel really like a teenager in that regard where I'm just like it still feels like really exciting to me, and I don't know, not sucking as a motherfucker. And I don't know. It's like like I'll let you know when I figure it out. Great, maybe we uh, maybe we'll speak again when you're done and we listen to it together and talk about our Yeah, I'll send you some shit. You tell me what's good. Okay, happy too, cool man? Yeah, thanks, that was that was fun. Nice to nice to talk about music. Thanks to Win Butler for breaking down his writing and recording process. We hope he's crammed into a tiny studio space with his band playing new music soon. You can hear all of our favorite arcade fire songs and I playlist at Broken record podcast dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcasts. There you can find extended cuts of our new and old episodes. Broken Record is produced with helpful Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez. Eric Sandler is executive produced by Meilabelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries and if you like Broken Record, please remember to share, rate, and review our show on your podcast. Apt Our theme musics by Kenny Beats I'm justin Richmond Bass