Arcade Fire to release new single ‘Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)’ tomorrow
The band's new album 'WE' lands next week
Arcade Fire are set to share their new single, ‘Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)’, tomorrow (April 27) – hear a teaser of the new single below.
The band are releasing sixth studio album ‘WE’ next week (May 6), and recently previewed new songs – including ‘Lookout Kid’ – at a surprise set on weekend one of Coachella 2022.
The new track was teased earlier this month in a video on Arcade Fire‘s Instagram, where frontman Win Butler can be seen playing the album on vinyl. He can be heard saying “next single is” followed by a snippet of a song.
Listen to a new teaser of ‘Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)’, which was played during the band’s run of Ukraine benefit concerts and will be premiered on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music radio show at 5pm BST tomorrow, below.
Later this week (April 29), Arcade Fire will return to the UK to play a special intimate show at London’s KOKO.
The Canadian icons will play the historic Camden venue on Friday, marking its official reopening after an extensive £70m three-year restoration and development project.
New album ‘WE’ is described in press material as a “concise 40 minute epic” of seven songs that is “as much about the forces that threaten to pull us away from the people we love, as it is inspired by the urgent need to overcome them”.
Frontman Win Butler shared a note with news of the album. “My grandmother read me a book when I was a little kid that had the word ‘WE’ stamped into its cover in broken 1920s gold leaf. As my eyes grew heavy, in the bedroom my father slept in as a child, I wondered… What is ‘WE’? Who are ‘WE’?
“There are questions that can rattle around in your head for a lifetime… / but once in a while the centuries grind to a halt / and WE are given the precious time / to ask again in our child-like inner voice / What is ‘WE?’”
Butler’s note continued: “Hiding in the shadow of Carl Jung / is the WE that holds each other back / and tears each other down / the WE that whispers secrets / and complains about paradise/ even heaven is too cold…
Ahead of the release of the album, Win’s brother and the band’s longtime multi-instrumentalist, Will Butler, announced he was leaving the band.
“There was no acute reason beyond that I’ve changed – and the band has changed – over the last almost 20 years,” he said, adding that “the band are still my friends and family”.