Arcade Fire - WE (2022) [Hi-Res]

“I was really just sort of thinking about my son and the world that he’s facing, and how I was a very, very, very depressed kid, particularly in high school,” Arcade Fire’s Win Butler tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about new single “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”. “In a lot of my life in general, music is like my medicine in a lot of ways. And it was just like, ‘Man, he’s going to need to have thick skin, and to just really be able to take a hit and have some just fortitude.’”

As the track rises from its acoustic beginnings to a grand orchestral swell, Butler counsels his son to trust in himself and accept imperfection. “I was just trying to sing to him in the future, or to his kids, even, because I’ve had an experience of listening to my grandfather’s music and just feeling this connection,” he says. “So maybe it’s for his kids—just to be able to listen to Grandpa in 100 years from now and be like, ‘It’s all right to be sad and there’s not any way that you have to be.’”

“Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” is the final track to be taken from WE before the LP arrives on 6 May. Produced by Butler with bandmate and wife Régine Chassagne, plus Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Beck), Arcade Fire’s sixth full album—their first since 2017’s Everything Now—is the product of songwriting that began in 2018 and continued throughout the pandemic as they amassed enough material for potentially two or three records. Listen to “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)”, plus the contemplative “The Lightning I” and its charging companion piece “The Lightning II”, and pre-add WE—once it’s released, the complete album will arrive in your library.