Arcade Fire recorded their take on Harry Styles’ “As It Was,” during a performance at BBC’s Maida Vale studios in London for BBC Music. The group also performed two of their own tracks — “Age Of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” and “The Lightning I, II“ — which come off their new LP, We.
Arcade Fire released We on May 6 via Columbia Records. The album — which was produced by longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich along with Arcade Fire’s Win Butler and Régine Chassagne — was recorded at studios in New Orleans, El Paso, and Mount Desert Island, Maine, in mid-2021 following a pandemic period that marked “the longest we’ve ever spent writing, uninterrupted, probably ever,” Butler said in a statement.
The album borrows its title from Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 sci-fi novel We, which would later inspire the dystopian works of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. The seven-song LP features guests Peter Gabriel and Father John Misty, and also marks longtime member Will Butler’s final album with the band. It’s split across two sides, titled “I” and “We,” with the first half exploring loneliness and isolation and the latter part celebrating reconnection.
Arcade Fire also performed “The Lightning I, II“ on Saturday Night Live over the weekend.