TORONTO - Over the summer, Arcade Fire treated fans to a series of hastily organized gigs that allowed the band to refine its new set of songs and fuel an ever-elevating level of hype for its long-awaited third disc, "The Suburbs."
But the semi-surprise gigs had an unintended effect on the band.
"We did those shows and then I already couldn't listen to the record anymore," multi-instrumentalist Will Butler told The Canadian Press over the telephone from Montreal.
"Because it was: 'Oh, this is totally foreign to what is happening live."'
Fortunately for Butler and co., it's unlikely many fans felt the same way, since the band was able to do what they usually manage to do -- maintain control.
The sound of "The Suburbs" -- which drops Tuesday -- had been a well-kept secret in an era during which new albums leak like faucets in nightclub washrooms. The album did, eventually, circulate illegally on the Internet but it took unusually long to do so.
Rumours about the record were dribbled out slowly by Arcade Fire, leaving fans -- and the likes of indie outlet Pitchfork -- trying to parse supposed hidden messages on the band's website. They toyed with a frustrating web app just to hear short snippets of the band's first new songs since 2007's "Neon Bible."
As the band played its series of intimate shows fans began to post grainy concert clips online, which were eagerly dissected by others who impatiently awaited the album's release.
The band wanted to make a big deal about "The Suburbs" and knew fans would play into the tease, Butler said.
"For us, it felt like a long time between these two records," he said.
"The album doesn't matter as much to a lot of bands, which I think is fine, I think that's kind of how the world is turning.
"But we have always been an album band. So I think it's 'cause that unit matters to us, it maybe makes it matter more to other people."
The band began work in earnest on "The Suburbs" in May 2009. Many of its 16 tracks are imbued with an immediacy that was once foreign for the band. For instance, first single "Ready to Start" -- an irrepressible rush of pulsing percussion and chiming keys -- and the art-punk roar of "Month of May" are more straightforward than anything the band has previously recorded.
"We were just looking for a variety, definitely, of tone and of sound," Butler said. "That's partly why some of it sounds lighter. There's a lot of contrast on the album and so the differences are brought out a little bit."
The band stretches its legs elsewhere, from the rollicking piano gallop of "The Suburbs," to the woozy shoegaze of "Empty Room," to the giddy Blondie stomp of "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)."
Butler's newfound synth prowess clearly had an effect on the shift in direction, and some new songs have drawn comparisons to '80s pop stalwarts New Order and Depeche Mode.
In that evolution toward a more compact sound, the band risked sacrificing the all-out catharses achieved again and again on the 2004 debut, "Funeral." Fans revel in those exhilarating moments during which layers of instrumentation coalesce with Win Butler's sky-reaching vocals and the insistent chant of the rest of the band, creating something almost too grandiose for a rock club.
"Some of the songs on this record, it's a little more sparse," Butler acknowledged. "But I think that's also just the variety thing that we wanted to get down. We wanted to have some thick songs and some thin songs."
Another reason the racket here never aspires to the frenzied heights of "Funeral" seems to be in Win Butler's voice, which is more assured and restrained, rarely breaking from its hinges the way it used to.
"(It's) definitely not as big a change as the Bob Dylan-Kermit the Frog voice," his brother Will said, laughing.
Lyrically, the band seems to be less consumed with the unease that characterized the tormented "Neon Bible," though Win Butler again and again seems to rage against soullessness in various forms.
On the towering "Rococo," he laments the modern kids who "build it up just to burn it back down," while the defiant "Ready to Start" opens with: "Businessmen drink my blood/ Like the kids in art school said they would."
The album's title is, of course, telling -- Win Butler really is singing here about the suburbs, about their sprawl, their stultifying effect and, at times, their comforts.
Win and Will Butler were raised in The Woodlands, Texas before relocating to Montreal, where Arcade Fire was formed. Will Butler said the area they grew up in was a planned community that took off in the 1970s. The brothers left town for boarding school in their teens, so they're reaching pretty far back for some of the memories being drawn upon here.
"Definitely part of it is trying to describe a certain feeling about growing up while you can still remember it," Butler said. "You just have to get memories down at a certain point because they do start to fade.
"But if you focus on them, you can get them down and it's a useful document to have for the future."
Each of their last two records have been certified platinum in Canada despite meagre radio play and the band's distaste for publicity and marketing.
It seems as though that stance has softened of late, if slightly. Typically opposed to licensing their music, Arcade Fire granted the use of two of their songs in movie trailers for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "Where the Wild Things Are."
The notoriously press-shy band also scheduled a number of interviews to promote the new record and have backed it with a fairly aggressive marketing campaign -- "The Suburbs" even comes with eight different covers (collect 'em all!).
But Butler said the band isn't changing its approach to promotion.
"We tend not to do anything in terms of press or in terms of licensing or in terms of getting ourselves out there -- we really are the Party of No," Butler said.
"We're just very persnickety about everything. You know, we're persnickety about what the T-shirt booth looks like at the venue.
"We like to keep control, which you lose pretty quick if you get yourself out there."
And, of course, the band's "persnickety" nature extends itself to the albums, which are crafted with uncommon care. But Butler said the band has never really felt the weight of pressure that comes with its nearly unanimous critical praise.
"Not really, for some reason or another," he said. "I guess we just kind of lucked out in terms of temperament.
"We could have worked forever on ('The Suburbs'), but we're not crazy people. You just have to give yourself a self-imposed deadline. (It's) like writing a university paper. No matter when it's due, you will finish it the morning that it's due. And you will print it out and it'll be great.
"Well, it won't always be great," he adds with a laugh, "but our records will always be great."
