Arcade Fire had just started to work on a new album when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in March. While that meant an abrupt end to the sessions, frontman Win Bulter found himself unable to stop writing.

“Once your body’s already going, there’s no stopping it, so I’ve just been writing,” Butler tells Rick Rubin on the producer’s Broken Record podcast.

“I can’t remember a time where I’ve written more,” Butler continues. “Just feels like being 18, just sitting at a piano for five days in a row and working on a melody for a verse.”

If the pandemic hadn’t happened, Butler guesses he and his band mates would be “getting towards wrapping up” the new album about now.

“So instead we just wrote two or three,” he adds.

As he continues to write, Bulter is itching to return to the recording studio. When Rubin asks what he feels the new material will sound like, Butler replies, “What would you want our record to sound like?”

“I want to be surprised,” Rubin answers.

“I think you’ll be surprised,” Butler teases.

Arcade Fire’s most recent album is 2017’s Everything Now.

By Josh Johnson
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