Arcade Fire make long-awaited return with 'We'

We, the sixth studio album by Arcade Fire, has been confirmed for a May 6 release via Columbia Records. First single “The Lightning I, II,” is available now across digital platforms – and as a video directed by Emily Kai Bock, which can be seen HERE.

Produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead), band members Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. It was recorded in New Orleans, El Paso and Mount Desert Island. We, arriving nearly five years after Everything Now, is “the longest we’ve ever spent writing, uninterrupted, probably ever," says Win Butler, in a statement. 

Running 40 minutes, the songs are about the forces that threaten to pull us away from the people we love and the urgent need to overcome them. They form a definable arc from darkness into light over the course of seven songs divided into two distinct sides -- Side “I” (fear and loneliness of isolation) and Side “We” (the joy and power of reconnection).

On the album’s cover, a photograph of a human eye by the artist JR evokes Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. This image -- embellished by the distinctive airbrush color tinting of Terry Pastor (utilizing the same physical technique he employed on David Bowie’s iconic Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust covers) – is the visual expression of WE.

Arcade Fire is: Régine Chassagne, Win Butler, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara, & Will Butler.

Track listing:

“I”

Age of Anxiety I

Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)
End of the Empire I-IV

“WE”

The Lightning I, II
Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)
Unconditional II (Race and Religion)
WE