Arcade Fire

Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band, consisting of husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Gara. The band's current touring line-up also includes former core member Sarah Neufeld and multi-instrumentalists Paul Beaubrun, Dan Boeckner and Eric Heigle. Each of the band's studio albums features contributions from composer and violinist Owen Pallett.

Founded in 2001 by friends and classmates Butler and Josh Deu, the band came to prominence in 2004 with the release of their critically acclaimed debut album '' Funeral''. Their second studio album, ''Neon Bible'', won them the 2008 Meteor Music Award for Best International Album and the 2008 Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year. Their third studio album, '' The Suburbs'', was released in 2010 to critical acclaim and commercial success. It received many accolades, including the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year, the 2011 Juno Award for Album of the Year and the 2011 Brit Award for Best International Album. In 2013, Arcade Fire released their fourth album, '' Reflektor'', and scored the feature film '' Her'', for which band members Will Butler and Owen Pallett were nominated in the Best Original Score category at the 86th Academy Awards. In 2017, the band released their fifth studio album '' Everything Now'', which was succeeded by their sixth studio album ''We'' in 2022.

All the band's studio albums have received nominations for Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammys. ''Funeral'' is widely considered by music critics to be one of the greatest albums of the 2000s. The band's work has also been named three times as a shortlist nominee for the Polaris Music Prize: in 2007 for ''Neon Bible'', in 2011 for ''The Suburbs'' and in 2014 for ''Reflektor''.

The band has been described as indie rock, art rock, dance-rock, and baroque pop. They play guitar, drums, bass guitar, piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, glockenspiel, keyboard, synthesizer, French horn, accordion, harp, mandolin and hurdy-gurdy, and take most of these instruments on tour; the multi-instrumentalist band members switch duties throughout shows.

History

2001–2003: Formation and early work

Win Butler and Josh Deu founded Arcade Fire in Montreal around 2001, having first met at Phillips Exeter Academy as high school students. Butler and Deu's musical ideas began to develop and the first incarnation of the band was born while they were attending McGill University and Concordia University, respectively."Joshua Deu interview"/
Madeline, 'Deu discusses past with Arcade Fire, ''The Ultraviolet'', November 13, 2010 (Deu currently is a Visual Arts instructor at Marlborough School (Los Angeles)) The duo began rehearsing their material at McGill where they met Régine Chassagne, a music student whom they asked to join them. Deu recalls, "Win and I played guitar. Everyone played guitar. We had no music to show her, but she ended up saying yes to joining us, and I don't know why. Maybe there was a little spark with Win." Halfway through 2001, the band consisted of Butler, Chassagne, Deu, multi-instrumentalist Tim Kile (later of Wild Light), bassist Myles Broscoe (later of Les Angles Morts, Crystal Clyffs, and AIDS Wolf), guitarist/drummer Dane Mills (later of Crackpot) and multi-instrumentalist Brendan Reed (later of Les Angles Morts and founding member of Clues), who lived with Butler and Chassagne in Montreal's Mile End neighbourhood at the time and was a collaborator with them on song-writing and arrangement (2001–2003). During a party in 2001, the band recorded a live Christmas album, ''A Very Arcade Xmas'', which they are rumored to have hand-distributed to their friends as a Christmas gift.

The initial Montreal structure of the band began to dissolve in the summer of 2002, when they travelled to Butler's family farm on Mount Desert Island, Maine to record their self-titled EP. Tension between Butler and bassist Myles Broscoe led the latter to exit the band following the recording session. Richard Reed Parry, who had been enlisted to help the band record, began to collaborate with them during the sessions and would go on to join the band shortly afterwards. Around the same time, Joshua Deu left the band to resume his studies; he continued to collaborate on the visual aspects of the band. In the winter of 2003, the band celebrated the release of its EP with a show at Montreal's Casa del Popolo. Before a crowd packed beyond capacity, the band's set ended (in the middle of an encore) with an argument between Butler and Reed, who quit the band on-stage. Mills told gathered friends in the crowd immediately thereafter that he considered the band to have broken up, as such resigning from the band as well. Following the on-stage implosion, Butler's brother Will Butler (subject of the early Arcade Fire song "William Pierce Butler") and Tim Kingsbury were brought in to replace Reed and Mills so that the band could continue, and they set out to promote the self-titled EP. The eponymous release (often referred to by fans as the ''Us Kids Know EP'') was sold at early shows. After the band achieved fame, the EP was subsequently remastered and given a full release.

Howard Bilerman joined the band on drums in the summer of 2003, and they began to play shows together, and record the album that would end up becoming '' Funeral''. The promise shown by the new band in their early live shows allowed them to land a record contract with the independent record label, Merge Records, before the end of their first year together.

When asked about the rumour that the band's name refers to a fire in an arcade, Win Butler replied: "It's not a rumour, it's based on a story that someone told me. It's not an actual event, but one that I took to be real. I would say that it's probably something that the kid made up, but at the time I believed him."

2004–2006: ''Funeral''

'' Funeral'' was released in September 2004 in Canada and February 2005 in Great Britain. The title of the debut album referred to the deaths of several relatives of band members (prominently the Butlers' grandfather, composer/arranger Alvino Rey) during its recording. These events created a somber atmosphere that influenced songs such as "Une année sans lumière" ("A Year Without Light"), "In the Backseat", and "Haïti", Chassagne's elegy to her homeland.

It received widespread critical acclaim and topped many year-end and decade-end lists. According to the website Metacritic, the album had the second most appearances on end-of-decade Top 10 lists, only behind Radiohead's '' Kid A''. In the updated version of ''Rolling Stones 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was ranked at #151.

The album was critically and commercially acclaimed. It appeared on many top ten album lists for 2004 and 2005 (due to delayed international releases), with Pitchfork, ''Filter'', No Ripcord, and The MTV2 2005 Review crowning it the album of the year. ''NME'' named ''Funeral'' second in their list of 2005's best albums. NME also named " Rebellion (Lies)" the second best track.
By November 2005, ''Funeral'' had gone gold in both Canada and the UK, and sold over half a million copies worldwide, a very large number for an independent release with minimal television or radio exposure. The album became Merge Records' first in the ''Billboard'' 200 chart and the label's biggest selling album to date, surpassing Neutral Milk Hotel's ''In the Aeroplane Over the Sea''.

The band booked small clubs for their 2004 tour, but growing interest forced many venue changes, far beyond the band's expectations, and the tour continued into mid-2005 throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, the SummerSonic Festival in Japan, and the Hillside Festival in Guelph. Taking much of the summer of 2005 off, the band made key festival appearances at the Halifax Pop Explosion, Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the Sasquatch! Music Festival, Lollapalooza, Vegoose Festival, Reading and Leeds Festival in the UK, Electric Picnic in Ireland and the Lowlands Festival in the Netherlands.

Arcade Fire was featured on the April 4, 2005 cover of ''Times Canadian edition. On May 1, 2005, the band performed at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. In May 2005, the band signed a short-term publishing contract with EMI for ''Funeral'', and in June the band released a new single, " Cold Wind", on '' Six Feet Under, Vol. 2: Everything Ends''. The BBC
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