March 28, 2024

Arcade Fire’s New Album Is Not A ‘Ropera,’ James Murphy Says

Earlier this month, Arcade Fire surprised pretty much everybody when they revealed the release date of their new album — October 29 — by replying to a fan on Twitter.

And that included the guy who produced it, former LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy.

“I didn’t even know that’s what they did. When you work on a record you don’t know any of the things around it. So when it comes out I’ll just be like ‘The Arcade Fire record’s out … oh, right!‘” Murphy told Billboard. “It’s been the food I eat and the air I breathe for a long time now. That happens with my own records. I am officially done with it, we’ve just been passing things back and forth, making choices on mixes.”

News of Murphy’s involvement on Arcade Fire’s new record first surfaced in late 2012, and the band were still holed up in the DFA Studio as recently as March. And as Murphy explained, the album evolved over the course of that time … to the point where, from the sound of things, it appears Win Butler and Co. have moved on from 2010’s Grammy-winning concept album The Suburbs.

“Producing is always really hard, and you can never tell who’s going to be easy to get along with … it turned out it was really nice, and everyone was amazingly respectful of one another,” Murphy said. “I’m not sure if it’s a concept record like the last one. … We don’t talk about where the songs come from unless somebody says ‘What I’m going for is more this.‘ That’s all I got into. I’m not trying to conduct an opera, or a rock opera — a ‘ropera’ in this case.”

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