Arcade Fire Shares Another Song From “We”
After sharing “The Lightning I,” and “The Lightning II” off their upcoming album, Arcade Fire has just dropped another one, “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)” two days ago. The track is a return to the sources with a heartfelt delivery and a buoyant melody trending to a gentle bombastic anthem, the type of charged euphoria we were used to hearing from the Canadian band. The melody is joyful and a tad melancholic at the same time, but still a bit flat in comparison to the emotional heights of the past that they used to produce. I would even say this sounds a bit naïve, with a lot of these “do-do-do-do” while the lyrics do not reflect the usual cynicism or cryptic intentions: “Lookout kid, trust your heart. You don’t have to play the part they wrote for you. Just be true,” says the song. “There’s nothing saccharine about unconditional love in a world that is coming apart at the seams.,” wrote the band on their social media, “WE need each other, in all of our imperfection. Lookout Kid is a reminder, a lullaby for the end times, sung to my son, but for everyone… Trust your heart, trust your mind, trust your body, trust your soul. Shit is going to get worse before it gets better, but it always gets better, and no one’s perfect. Let me say it again. No one’s perfect. “
Released a few weeks ago, “The Lightning I,” and “The Lightning II” are cascading keys, striking and passionate delivery while the songs (which are made to be listened back to back into one long track) build up a very familiar cathartic Arcade Fire machinery. This is vigorous and propulsive music mixed with a great sense of exhilaration, a sort of back-to-basics for Arcade Fire.
The songs will be featured on the band’s upcoming album, “We,” whose title was inspired in part by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin’s dystopian science-fiction novel. The album, produced by Nigel Godrich, Win Butler, and Regine Chassagne, was recorded during the pandemic in New Orleans, El Paso, and Mount Desert Island, and will be out on May 6 via Columbia.
