There are high expectations that Arcade Fire will exceed their own high standards with an upcoming second album and tour. But despite the fame and acclaim, the Canadian rockers are intent on avoiding the trappings of celebdom and getting on the business of making good music, writes Jim Carroll

LL they did, Arcade Fire will protest, was make a record. One little record containing big songs about life, love and death. Thousands of bands make albums every single year, you know, about similar themes. Even in Arcade Fire's native Canada, other people make records and put them on release. But the record is Funeral, and no one else makes records like this any more. Furious, elegant, exuberant and romantic, it stops you in your tracks because it features all those things which rock no longer engages with.

Then there was the live show during 2004 and 2005. A runaway locomotive of an experience, Arcade Fire's live show was startling and frenzied, taking the songs on Funeral and pushing them further and higher than you thought they could go. With their spiritual soul revue that left you shaking in the aisles at its whirl of sound and clamour, Arcade Fire became the first band in years that you could actually believe in.

In 2006, they retreated to a church they had purchased outside Montreal and started work on a new album. They went to Budapest to record with an orchestra and military choir. They called in the brass players from Calexico to help them with another song. They had all the time in the world and they took it.

It's the last day of January and Arcade Fire are in London to perform Neon Bible live. The new album is released in March and they're playing five shows to introduce people to the songs. Needless to say, the gigs sold out in seconds. In fact, there are no tickets left on sale for any Arcade Fire shows between now and April.

Arcade Fire are also in London to talk to the press. Every day, a couple of band members will come to a hotel room for a few hours and answer questions.

"We've never sat in a room for a few days before and talked to a bunch of journalists about our music," says Richard Parry. "It's weird, and I haven't made up my mind yet if it's good weird or a bad weird."

Parry is the one who spent the Funeral tour wearing a crash helmet and getting hit over the head with drumsticks on stage. He doesn't expect to be doing the same thing 20 years from now. A couple of weeks ago, he took the band back to his old high school in Ottawa to play their first show of 2007.

"I think we knew the right time to stop touring," says Tim Kingsbury. "None of us are interested in doing one of those Metallica or U2 tours which goes on forever."

Kingsbury is the one who looks the interviewer right in the eye and gives straight-as-an-arrow answers. He grew up in Guelph, Ontario's Royal City, before moving to Montreal and hooking up with Parry in a band called New International Standards. One night the pair ended up at a party in a loft watching a band featuring a big strapping lad called Win and a girl called Regine.

"Of course we argue," says Regine Chassagne about her relationship with band co-founder and husband Win Butler. "I think it's healthy. Because we're family, it makes it easier to be blunt with each other."

Born in Haiti, Chassagne ended up in Montreal after her family fled Baby Doc Duvalier's despotic regime. She used to play gigs in shopping centres with a medieval band called Les Jongleurs de la Mandragore, but she doesn't need to do that any more, especially after the new album hits the shops.

If Funeral was a shot from the blue, then Neon Bible is a cannonball from the same direction. More finely shaped than the debut and with far more power under the bonnet, there are subtleties and angles here which will take on a life of their own as the band find their live footing (see panel). For every song which instantly catches the ear (Keep the Car Running, Intervention"), another will take you into deeper waters (Windowsill, My Body Is a Cage).

Chassagne says they knew they had gone as far as they could with Funeral by the end of 2005. "It was time to come up with some new stuff and to refresh things. When you begin to think that you can't really push things any higher, you should stop what you're doing. And that's what we did."

Back in Montreal, it wasn't just the music which needed to be refreshed.

"Everything had changed on a personal level," says Parry. "When we recorded Funeral, we all had normal lives and jobs. We recorded the album when we had time off. Since then, we've become a band who tours and records full time. That, I can tell you, takes a little bit of getting used to."

In the studio, too, there were things to work out before a note was struck.

"We had all these aspirations and ambitions about what the record could be like," says Chassagne. "But a lot of the ideas at the start were around Funeral. It's easy to create something new if you already have something to work against. What we wanted to do with Neon Bible was something which would resonate in a different way."

They're curious to hear reactions to the album. "With Funeral," says Kingsbury, "there was this record which we had worked out in our heads live before we went into the recording studio. With this record, we're playing it for the first time at these shows and it just feels strange."

"I suppose we do feel a little uncertain about this record right now," admits Chassagne. "We know the songs are good because we didn't really change our approach to songwriting. It's all about the energy and that's still there. I guess it's like Tim said: we don't know what people will make of them live."

One thing they're quite sure about: whatever listeners hear in the lyrics will be quite at odds with what was intended.

"There are all these literary and religious images in the songs, which I know some people will view in a certain way. But we as a band have no say over those songs once they're out there. You can try to project what you want onto them - or even try to make sure they're not projecting certain things - but the audience make them their own."

Says Chassagne: "I really like that people hear things in songs I've written which I never intended in a million years. I get people coming up to me and telling me, quite seriously, about this song and what it is about. I really don't know what to say to them because I don't have a notion what they're talking about."

For all the band, the recognition factor has been the strangest thing of all to get used to. "I just find it to be totally hilarious that some people place this importance on you because you happen to be well known for playing in a band." says Kingsbury.

"I know I've become wary," says Chassagne. "None of us want to be celebrities, we all just want to be these normal people going about our business. Don't get me wrong - it's really awesome to meet all these people and talk to people and hear them go on about the music we make. But it's so weird when someone comes up and asks to have their picture taken with you. Whoa, if I'd time, I'd sit down and have a coffee with you maybe, but a photo?"

But Chassagne and the others know they are likely to experience more and more of this as the Neon Bible roadshow starts to roll. Expectations are greater for this release. They've signed a distribution deal with Universal Music ("it is coming out on our label, but we're hiring them to get it into the shops," says Parry) and their diaries are full until the Glastonbury festival at the end of June.

From here on in, with the record completed and ready to go, the live show takes over. "We have never been one of those bands who want to play music for rock star reasons," says Chassagne. "We've always been quite confrontational live and wanting to push those songs to new places. I know people go on about how theatrical the shows are, but it's not Broadway. It's always about the songs and the mood they create."

The show most fondly recalled by all the band is their appearance at the Electric Picnic in Stradbally, Co Laois in 2005.

"That was the one," exclaims Parry. "That was probably the best show we've ever done. It all just came together that day like never before."

"We were all so blown away by the whole thing," says Chassagne. "The crowd, the tent, the noise, everything. We were all looking at each other after the show and just grinning at what had happened. Even when we are doing crazy shows every night, a show like that one stands out a mile."

Neon Bible is released on March 2. Arcade Fire play the Olympia, Dublin on March 5th and 6th. Both shows are sold out