Culture
15 Mar 22

Arcade Fire announce first new singles in three years, 'The Lightning I, II' and 'Age of Anxiety'

Arcade Fire’s most recent album was 2017’s acclaimed Everything Now.

Arcade Fire have announced 'The Lightning I, II,' their first new single in three years, alongside '

The song will arrive on Thursday, March 17 following a series of mysterious postcards sent to fans by the band. The cryptic postcards displayed the message “we missed you” above a stave filled with musical notes.

Arcade Fire’s last album was 2017’s Everything Now. Two years later, they shared a cover of 'Baby Mine' for Dumbo. More recently, the band performed an as-yet-unreleased song called 'Generation A' on Stephen Colbert’s Election Night 2020.

The Canadian indie-rock behemoths have been promising a new album since 2020, after celebrating the 10th anniversary of their 2010 album The Suburbs. Active since 2000, the act is composed of husband and wife duo Win Butler and Régine Chassagne - along with Win's younger brother William Butler, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Jeremy Gara.

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.

Third studio LP, The Suburbs, was released in 2010 to critical acclaim and commercial success. It won 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 Win Butler and Owen Pallett were nominated in the Best Original Score category at the 86th Academy Awards.

All five of the band's studio albums have received nominations for Best Alternative Music Album at the Grammys.

Arcade Fire performed at New Orleans’ Toulouse Theatre last night, with proceeds from the show going to Plus1’s Ukraine Relief Fund. The gig was live-streamed via TikTok and Instagram, and snippets from that recording sees the band performing ‘Lightning I, II’.

The band also performed a second unreleased track, ‘Age of Anxiety’. The song borrows elements from ‘Memories of the Age of Anxiety’, a 45-minute instrumental ambient track they released for a meditation app last year. The version the band performed features vocals from frontman Win Butler.

Revisit the Hot Press interview with Butler from July 2018 here.

Watch Arcade Fire perform ‘Lightning I, II’ and ‘Age of Anxiety’ at their Ukraine benefit concert below: