Arcade Fire - Mega Superthread. All gig/new album discussion.

Remember, Arcade Fire are indie in the truest sense of the word, and they buy their own dinner. It's no secret that they prefer to be doing their own shows to festivals by quite a margin, but it's the festival slots that fund those tours. And as previously mentioned, the Oxegen set is apparently part of the horse-trading done to get the venue they want later on this year.

About singles and albums... The record seems to be done, and the mastering is at the very least underway, but somebody who apparently works for their distribution end of things has been insisting it's been bumped to September. The album was originally pencilled in for some time this summer with a single due in May, but that seems to have hit a few speedbumps; not least among them, I suspect, the Haitian earthquake.

As for the single, whatever they filmed with Spike Jonze is likely a promo video tied in with it, and that's expected to be out in August. It would seem odd to me for them to start playing festivals with new material before the album itself is out, but if the album has been unexpectedly delayed, the dates could well have been booked before it happened.

All remains to be seen though, I mean they've done a fine job of keeping themselves very quiet indeed. They were to play a private show in Texas for the cast and crew of the Spike Jonze thing, but somebody blabbed to Twitter so they had to scrap it.

Yeah, it's not uncommon to tour stuff in development, but Arcade Fire tend to be a bit finicky about their quality control. At least one, possibly two documentaries about them have been made and shelved purely because they weren't happy with the final result. I'd find it strange that they'd be happy to let new songs out there via thousands of youtubes from festivals before they're absolutely, positively finished.

I know plenty of bands do it all the time, I'd just find it a bit out of character for this one. I mean, they've gone to enormous lengths to keep schtum about this album - they've been recording this thing on and off for three years now, bear in mind, and the only thing we know about it is that it's probably got something to do with the suburbs and that the people who've heard it think it's good - and then the first time they try any of the new stuff out on a live audience is during their first festival headliner tour, in front of crowds like Reading? That's a big stage to fail on, you know what I mean?

If that is how it's going to work out, I'd hazard it's not how they wanted it, at least. Win Butler's a very nice dude and all, but I'd bet a Whispa Gold that the guy likes keeping a very tight handle indeed on what does and what doesn't have the band's name on it, and it just seems to sit a little oddly that he'd be willing to commit effectively unfinished songs to youtube before they're even set in stone for the album.

Exactly. If Arcade Fire debut a developing song at a festival, then the first time several thousand people will get to hear it is with Youtube quality sound, via the microphone on somebody's digital camera, while a load of Jay Z fans chatter among themselves in the foreground.

It would seem to me a strange thing for them to do, given how much care they've always taken about presenting their music. We'll see though.

I reckon we might have an album title.

It only reads "Arcade Fire Presents" now, but a few minutes ago the header on the band's homepage switched to "Arcade Fire Presents "The Suburbs"".

Could refer to the Spike Jonze film, but they'd have no reason to announce that now, and the full working title for that has been "Scenes From The Suburb" all along.