About Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band from Montreal, Quebec, 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.
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. 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 , bassist Myles Broscoe , guitarist/drummer Dane Mills and multi-instrumentalist Brendan Reed , 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 . 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 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 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 was sold at early shows. After the band achieved fame, the EP was subsequently remastered and given a full release.
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