Arcade Fire last night used their appearance on Showtime’s US election special hosted by Stephen Colbert to debut a new track entitled Generation A.
Whether it goes on to feature on the band’s next album remains to be seem, but its first performance comes after Win Butler has spent 2020 regularly talking about their sixth record, the follow-up to 2017’s Everything Now; back in April, as pandemic restrictions were ramping up, he revealed on social media that ‘the writing had intensified, and the work was flowing out’ during that unexpected spare time.
More recently, he told Rick Rubin’s Broken Record podcast that they were planning on heading ‘back to Texas to make the next record’, fittingly for this performance, ‘during the election’.
“This time around we’ve been in lockdown, have a studio, have every keyboard, drum machine, piano – everything I could want – and time,” he added. “The one piece that’s been missing is the time, and now the time is there.”
