I interviewed the Arcade Fire for the A.V. Club. In order to introduce it on this site, I wrote a really long anti-PR post that, in the heat of the moment, seemed completely appropriate. But I learned long ago to sit on these sorts of passionate cris de coeur for at least a day before unfurling them across the internet, and I’m glad I did so in this case. That said, I will share one paragraph about my experience, which scans as acceptable a few days later:
And so it was with this Arcade Fire interview. After delaying the interview several times and promising me I could speak with Win or Regine, the PR person met me at the interview site and told me I was going to speak with Jeremy and Richard, the drummer and utility multi-instrumentalist, respectively. That’s fine—they’re both great guys and fantastic musicians—but that’s also not what we agreed upon. But what could I do? This was The Arcade Fire, and I was but one in a long string of prostrating journalists.
Oh, Arcade Fire. I recently read a fantastic piece by Matt Feeney in The American Scene, in which he eviscerates the song “City With No Children.” After flagging a particularly cringeworthy line, he concludes:
In that moment, I realize that my allegiance to Arcade Fire has been a fragile construct built on a combination of anxiety that they had it in them to say such a thing and relief that they had miraculously avoided saying it so far. But now that they’ve said it, so doggedly, so willfully, I can’t help thinking it’s what they’ve been trying to say all along.
It could very well be true!
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