Will Butler

Will Butler releases solo album, gives Arcade Fire recording update

Arcade Fire‘s Will Butler released his new solo album Generations today. “My first record, Policy, was a book of short stories,” Butler says. “Generations is more of a novel—despairing, funny, a little bit epic… A big chunk of this record is asking: What’s my place in American history? What’s my place in America’s present? Both in general—as a participant, as we all are, in the shit that’s going down—but, also extremely particularly: me as Will Butler, rich person, white person, Mormon, Yankee, parent, musician of some sort, I guess. What do I do? What can I do? The record asks that question over and over, even if it’s not much for answers.” You can stream Generations below.

To celebrate Generations, Will did a La Blogothèque “Take Away” show which he filmed in NYC at Central Park and in Fort Greene, performing “Close My Eyes” and “Bethlehem” from the new album; watch that below.

Meanwhile, Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs just turned 10 and he talked a bit about the record’s legacy with Hanuman Welch of Apple Music radio show ALT CTLR. “It still feels alive,” Will told Welch. “I don’t have the distance on it. Still I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe when I’m 88, I can judge it.’ But I still feel like making it and touring it, all of that is still fresh. It’s still diapers and wipes. Now it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s still my baby and first steps and all of that.’ So I don’t have clarity on it, except it does still … I’ll listen to it and be like, ‘Oh, right.’ Sonically and lyrically and the mood still feels self like there’s something there.”

Will also talked about what’s next for Arcade Fire and the status of their new album. “It always takes us a year, a year and a half to make a record anyway,” Will said. “We’re not behind schedule in a certain way, and when Régine will demo eternally, given time on their hands, which they have they’ll demo eternally. We don’t quite have the file management to make a record over the internet. So there will be some moments that will be coming from all over. We’ll be able to get back together at some point. And the dream is that it’ll just be a different process and it’ll be like, ‘All right, we’re together and here it goes.’ But yeah, it’s a bit of a question mark. I feel like there’s a lot of question marks for the next six months.”

Will discussed what’s next for Arcade Fire in an interview with Spin, too. “We always have a giant pile, and we’re still in the giant pile phase, and then we narrow it down to 15-20 songs, and then it starts to take shape,” he said. “Always in the giant pile, like, it could be a punk record; it could be this kind of record. It just depends on once we get back together — god willing we’ll be able to get back together at some point — it’ll be pretty clear what we’re good at playing and what direction it is, but there’s kind of not a direction yet.”

You can listen to Will’s Apple Music interview below.

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