-Aah!
-Take a sip from your soul
On a metaphysical milkshake
-Sorry about that, man.
-It happens, you know?
-Were you scared? -Yeah, I was.
-Come on. Bring it in.
-Ah. I feel so safe here now.
-Shh. -I feel safe.
-Win Butler.
Arcade Fire.
-Yeah, man. -Aah!
Uh, thanks for coming into my van.
As you know, it's a very special van.
We can go anywhere that the human heart
and mind desire.
-Mm-hmm. -Where would you like to go?
-Well, I haven't been to Haiti in a while.
-Let's do it. -All right.
My biggest influence
of the last six years is Haitian music.
-Other than RAM Haiti, I don't know much Haitian music.
What would you recommend?
-A lot of it doesn't record super well.
I mean, it's just like -- Rara music is the street music
in Haiti, which is kind of African drums and these horns.
So, there'd be like seven different horns.
Each of them has a different note.
So, like -- Da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da
You know, kind of do these complex rhythmic patterns.
And there's this band called Rara Fanm,
which means woman's rara.
And they're the only, to my knowledge, all-female --
They kind of look like hot '90s R&B people,
like, playing African drums,
and kind of something that M.I.A. is probably going for,
but, like, super-duper ra version of it.
-Yeah. Now, you guys played a live concert
out in the middle of nowhere in Haiti
as a benefit for Partners in Health.
Régine and I had been many times,
and we always would have an acoustic guitar
and end up playing for a bunch of the kids.
And kind of just as a public service,
we brought up a big sound system from Port-au-Prince,
and we opened for RAM, actually.
5,000 people just came from the mountains,
just from word of mouth, from hearing
that some weirdos from...
-Now, what did the Haitians think of you playing songs
from, like, the suburbs?
-There's no context of rock music in Haiti.
A lot of people in Cange have not heard The Beatles
or the Rolling Stones or --
It just kind of made us realize, like,
how much context you take for granted in music.
The feeling that we got playing
the music there made us want to make a record
that we could go play in Haiti and would destroy.
Like, we could, like, get people dancing.
'Cause, you know, there's like a lot
of talk about, like, cultural appropriate.
I mean, I remember, like, "Graceland" came out,
and people were like, "You can't make African music."
But the thing about music is that it exists in the air.
There's no international boundaries.
If you're an artist, I don't think
that you're supposed
to be codifying things into these,
like, weird cultural boxes.
-Yeah, you're only allowed to play music
that's within your kind of cultural boundary.
That's absurd. -It's really absurd,
and it's a really anti-artistic way of thinking.
-I heard this amazing thing
on NPR about the history of the banjo,
that they had tracked down, like,
the original banjo... -Yeah. It's from Africa, right?
-...from Ghana.
-Yeah. -And, like, you think about it,
you know, the banjo idea coming over on the slave ships.
-It's like the whitest...
-Yeah, this white, like -- You think about
white hillbilly music, it's banjo.
But then that banjo leads to kind of blues guitar,
which leads to rock 'n' roll,
which leads to the British invasion,
which leads to The Smiths,
which leads to Arcade Fire, which takes you guys to Haiti.
Like, it all goes around.
-It's always constantly going back and forth.
I mean, that's kind of what music is for.
That's the thing that's valuable about it.
There's such a thing as, like, stealing culture or whatever
and trying to pass something off as your own,
but I don't think that the songs on -- There's not a --
I've never heard a compas song
that sounds like "Here Comes the Night Time."
It doesn't sound like a Haitian song.
There's elements of it, you know, and they're sort of --
Anyway, I think it's really -- -I mean, the American "Office"
didn't come from any other inspiration.
It just...
-That beard grew back like a [bleep]
-Yeah, right? -That's fast.
-I shaved it off when I did their video in Montreal completely.
This is just since then.
-Maybe it -- -Aah! -Maybe it's not hair.
It could be mold or something.
-Yeah, maybe, maybe.
My son loves your band, by the way.
He's 9 years old.
He is a huge Arcade Fire fan.
-Great taste. -And he said,
"Make sure you tell Win"... -Yeah.
-...he said, "my favorite songs are 'Reflektor,'
'Afterlife,' 'Joan of Arc,'
and 'No Cars Go.'" -Okay.
So, mostly new stuff.
A child after my own heart. -Yeah.
So, you like the new stuff that you guys are doing...
-I do, yeah.
-...even though it's kind
of weird, Euro, watered-down disco?
-Yeah, despite that, I like it, yeah.
It's been really fun to play.
-There was this great review of it in Paste,
and it was talking about how every Arcade
Fire album is like an event.
Each one has really been magnificent and distinct.
-Mm-hmm. -How do you guys do that?
-Each time we've made a record,
like, the band could have very easily been called The Funerals
or the The Neon Bibles or The Suburbs.
It's almost like we're launching a new band every times.
It's kind of how we've always approached it.
-What's so cool is that every album, to me,
is like four different films almost,
like four different film scores with certain characters.
-Well, I was in film school before I was in a band,
and it definitely kind of feels kind
of like we're making a movie sometimes.
-So, you guys are still believers in the album
as opposed to the single.
-A single, to me, is more like a shot of adrenaline,
and, for me, albums have more of a sense
of kind of opening my mind,
opening me up to the world a lot more,
and kind of giving me tools to be a human.
-So, if you could name three albums
that you give you the tools
to be a human --
a deeper, richer human -- what would they be?
-I mean for sure, like, "The Bends,"
"OK Computer," "Kid A."
I listen to The Cure a lot.
I remember listening to "Disintegration" so much
that it wasn't a sad album
to me anymore. -Mm.
-Maybe Neil Young. "After the Gold Rush" --
I've listened to that album so many times, it's crazy.
-It's a reflection of a reflection Of a reflection
of a reflection Life's big questions -- lightning round.
What's the worst lyric you've ever written?
-"Children, wake up, hold your mistake up."
Just kidding. That's a great [bleep] lyric.
-What's the best advice you've ever received?
-We had Thanksgiving dinner with Neil Young
and we were working on "Reflektor"
and it was the end of the night and we were leaving
and he was like, "Well, guys, have fun making your album.
Or it could not be fun at all. That's fine, too."
I feel that way about...
-"It doesn't matter if it's fun."
-...making TV or making movies.
It's like sometimes you just have the best time
with the cast and everything's in sync,
it just feels great, and then the movie sucks
or the TV sucks.
And then sometimes it's just like pulling teeth
and gritting fingernails and --
-There's conflict that's supposed to be in making something good.
There's just like an inherent conflict.
It's not something to be scared of.
-And, Win Butler,
what is your life's big question?
What do you wrestle with?
-The idea of justice
because there's obviously not justice in the world.
-Sure.
-If I have an understanding of God,
it's kind of rooted in the idea of justice.
And so that's the big question --
like, where is the justice at, yo?
-Justice is --
Making justice is a spiritual act.
-Yeah. -Win was talking about
what albums helped defined him as a human being,
the kind of music that was in his DNA.
He talks about music being out there
in the atmosphere for everyone.
So, I'd love to hear from you.
What albums helped define you,
helped make you a kind of deeper, richer,
better human being in a way?
What albums do you have a relationship
with and a story with?
Write them down in the comments section
and why they are special to you,
and we will read through the comments
and maybe give some of those albums
a gander. What do you say?
-Sounds good. -Thanks for being on the show.
And again, I'm really sorry about the whole beginning thing,
getting you in the van, you know?
I hope it didn't freak you out.
-What do you mean?
-Aah!