Stereo Warning

For "Intervention" and "My Body is a Cage," was it important to get a real pipe organ and not just a synth?
RÉGINE CHASSAGNE: It's so rare you get to hear real pipe organ outside of a classical context. It's such a powerful instrument.
WIN BUTLER: It's really aggressive, especially when the stops are all opened up. The first time I heard Régine play it like that, it struck me how biting the sound was. I'd never heard it used in a different context before.
RÉGINE CHASSAGNE: My friend was taking care of a church in Montreal that was about to be sold. He invited a bunch of people to an art exhibition while he had the place. I went there and played the organ at two in the morning. I pulled out all the stops and started playing, and it was so big and physical. When I stopped, there was 20 or 30 seconds of reverb with all the crazy harmonics. It was so loud, that in the middle I thought I'd started the bells by mistake. 'Oh no, it's two in the morning!' It's a very special instrument. It's a mechanical synthesizer, an ancestor of the synth.

You've worked a lot in churches recently - what appeals to you about working and playing in them?
RÉGINE CHASSAGNE: It is funny that they get turned into condos where no one speaks to their neighbour. Nobody even knows who lives next door!
WIN BUTLER: It was mostly about the pipe organ. For our studio, a lot of small churches are designed with acoustics in mind, so that you can speak without a microphone and people can hear you. And having a space where you can spread out and work in is good.
RICHARD REED PARRY: Win and Régine had talked about finding a church to live in, and then they found this one and figured it would make a great studio. It's cool to be in a building that has a history to it, as opposed to studios that are just studios. Oddly enough, those just feel like studios. 'There's the photo of Mick Jagger on the wall. There's a photo of a young Rod Stewart. Isn't that nice-all that's ever happened here is people making rock records.' Or you can find somewhere that has a bit more life.

Did you know what kind of sound you were going for Neon Bible?
WIN BUTLER: It was important that we weren't just polishing this rough thing into something smooth. A lot of the time was working for a couple of weeks, then taking a couple of weeks off. We used to play live while we were writing songs, and develop arrangements over time. This time, a song like "The Well and the Lighthouse" was recorded on the day we figured out how to play it. We played it a bunch of times, and got it so that it was exciting to us, and played it the best we could, and that was it. We tried to keep the core of a weird little song.
RÉGINE CHASSAGNE: You keep the energy, also. You could make everything exactly how theoretically it has to go, but that takes the soul out of it. For me, there's always this balance between two absolutes: the intellectual absolute, where you have to think about this arrangement where it will be this and nothing else; and the other absolute, which is completely spontaneous-'now, I've got it, don't even think about it.' I try to take the best out of each method.

How much more did this cost than Funeral?
WIN BUTLER: I don't really know. Definitely more. A lot of it was investing in the studio. We paid a lot of people after the fact for Funeral, because we didn't have any money at the time. You always make the most of what you have. It's important for us to have genuine freedom to realise stuff we want to do. A lot of the bands that are models for us have been able to do that: do some crazy shit when they want to, but not get into that radio world, where you need hits and you're only thinking of that and spending money on nothing.

Tell me the story of the Budapest orchestra. Were any of you actually there?
RÉGINE CHASSAGNE: Owen [Pallett, occasional touring violinist] and I wrote the arrangements. It was very intense, because it was in a very short time. I went there with Win and we recorded the songs.
WIN BUTLER: I knew that Régine had always wanted to do orchestral stuff, so it was important to me to find a way to make it happen. Arvo Part's son is a recording engineer, and he helped with the sessions. He's our age, but he's been around the classical world his whole life. He knew the studios in Budapest and set up the conductor and helped make it happen. Those were by far the hardest songs to mix. We didn't want it to sound like Arcade Fire with the Walt Disney orchestra on top. It's just a bit grander than what we can do on our own. For "Black Mirror" and "No Cars" in particular, those songs were conceived with orchestral stuff in mind.

Was there a change in the approach to vocals?
WIN BUTLER: Before this record, I've always sung about an octave above my range. Kind of on purpose. "Tunnels" and "Power Out" are definitely too high for my natural singing voice, but for what the songs are about it kind of made sense. This record is definitely the lower end of my voice. "Neon Bible" has the lowest notes I can sing. "Intervention" is pretty low. Singing "Keep the Car Running" feels so good, because it's the only song we have that's exactly in my range. It doesn't hurt to sing. I can sing as loud as I want. There's more songs in that range.

There's lots of apocalyptic imagery on the record, and some of it is obviously drawn from headlines, but were there any specific personal encounters that inspired anything on this record?
WIN BUTLER: When we went to Brazil for the first time, we were staying in Sao Paulo and driving through these slums, miles and miles of shanty towns, and then pulling up to the Hyatt Regency where we were staying, which was a big compound with barbed wire and a guard and stuff. Not being able to go outside because they tell you that they'll kill you to steal your wallett-it was a very strange experience. That was the beginning of the idea for "Black Wave."

Where did the title Neon Bible come from? Was it at all related to the John Kennedy Toole novel?
WIN BUTLER: It's a physical thing you see from time to time, a neon sign on a church. I thought of the name a while ago, and then read the book and thought, "Oh, too bad I can't use that." But as the record went on, I knew it was the title of the record. I'd thought of it as an idea, and then I read his other book, Confederacy of Dunces, and then heard reference to this book. It was more inspiring to me that a 16-year old wrote a book that isn't the best book in the world but deals with some interesting themes. The idea of a 16-year old writing a novel-instead of watching TV and doing whatever 16-year olds do-is pretty inspiring.
RICHARD REED PARRY: It's also about blind consumerism. Not in a direct way, but I feel like that's there: humans living in the world as consumers, as participants, how people choose to be in the world and react to the world and treat the world.
JEREMY GARA: That ties into the Red Campaign as well, if you want to take it further. That's the only thing we've said yes to all year. It's the only thing that admits to the blatant consumerism of North America. So let's tap into that for good, or at least try, instead of pretending that's not the way responsible people are. [Arcade Fire licensed the song "Rebellion (Lies)" to the Red Campaign during Christmas 2006, which raised funds for African AIDS relief through a dollar taken from every purchase at select clothing retailers.]

What about what Neon Bible says about religion?
WIN BUTLER: There's definitely an aspect of religion always combining with culture and becoming a third thing. Where it gets weird is when people mistake the culture for religion, and vice versa: these deeply held beliefs that are partially cultural artifacts, the idea that every line in the Bible is supposed to apply to some real thing in your life. There's a lot to chew on in the Bible, and to think of it as one coherent whole that's telling you one specific thing, like it's some kind of manual on how to live-I don't see how you can read that and get that out of it. There is some advice in there, but it's way more varied than that.

You had a lot of endorsements from people you respected: David Byrne, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen. Did they pass on any advice you took to heart?
WIN BUTLER: It's cool to see where people are later in their careers, and how they've done it. Not necessarily as a model. Very often you meet rock dudes who make rock music and they're mentally retarded. So meeting people who have real lives and who are interesting…
RÉGINE CHASSAGNE: And they're connected to the world.
WIN BUTLER: They're not in la-la land. It's good to see.
JEREMY GARA: David Byrne sent us a detailed email once, which was not so much advice, but how he felt about the situation we were in.
RICHARD REED PARRY: Which was as much about the modern music world as it was about us. I think he put an identical thing up afterwards on his blog. It basically said, "If a band can do what they do and be happy doing it and get a mild income out of it, then is the music industry needed? Are big recording budgets needed? Are big studios needed?" It was interesting.

This is the part where Win whines about being famous...
WIN BUTLER: It's kind of a bummer to not be able to play more live without it being a big thing. There was a point when I was writing in my online journal quite a bit, until I realised that I was basically just writing for Pitchfork and NME. I might as well be doing that directly. There was a good six months that was frustrating, because it was coming across like I was trying to build up some hype for the album. I'd say, 'We did this.' And within minutes, those sites would be like, 'They did this!' Not that I'm perusing the internet all the time-I try not to think about it at all-but it bounces back at you. I think our approach is definitely centered around the live show. I'm just excited to get these songs sounding good enough to play in front of people. I think that's our strongest point. The rest takes care of itself. You can get away with being a shitty live band and still have people buy your records, but it's much more inspiring to me to make the live thing really good and not to think about the radio too much.

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