Arcade Fire’s Irish debut, their legendary set at Electric Picnic 2005, is still talked about by audience and band alike as something special – but it was followed, in Irish festival terms, by a disappointing Oxegen showing. They’ve learned the lessons from that and are looking forward to kindling their love affair with Irish audiences, Jeremy Gara tells Lauren Murphy
WHEN YOU’RE a member of one of the biggest bands in the world, who have just had one of the busiest years in their existence, time off is precious. Jeremy Gara, drummer with Arcade Fire, is savouring today’s summer sun. He’s just been pottering around in his back garden, made a healthy breakfast and is setting himself up to have a “mellow day”.
Tending to your garden? It’s not typical rock-star behaviour. But then, Arcade Fire aren’t your typical rock band. Since Win Butler formed the world-beating act in 2003, the Montreal-based troupe have gone from strength to strength, conquering the world one territory at a time and picking up more than a few plaudits along the way.
Gara is ready and willing to discuss world domination, but first things first: we need to talk about Electric Picnic. Considering that the band are ending the European leg of their tour at Stradbally, it’s going to be a special occasion. Of course, there’s also the fact that their 2005 gig at the same festival has gone down in Irish gigging lore; over the years, it has acquired the sort of legendary status of The Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall.
“It was special, and that’s really the reason we’re coming back,” says the upbeat, friendly Gara. “I don’t know what happened when we played, but it was just one of those magical shows that locked in perfectly. The crowd was just totally up for it. It was definitely one of the biggest audiences we’d ever played for at that point, and we played pretty well. It was just a totally magical experience. Ever since then, it’s always come up, like ‘Do we play Electric Picnic again?’, and either the timing’s been bad or we tried doing Oxegen instead – which was also a great experience, but a completely different atmosphere. But, you know, we’re really exploratory, so it was great for us to experience both. So we’re super, super up for coming back to play it. We actually kind of mapped the whole end of our touring cycle around it – we play that show, then we play Austin City Limits and a show in Montreal, and then we’re pretty much done until we have some more music.”
Gara is diplomatic about the band’s gig at last year’s Oxegen, but it left many of even the band’s most ardent fans cold. A combination of factors meant their headline set was delivered to a largely unresponsive crowd, making for a deflated atmosphere and not the kind of major festival return they might have expected. Do they regret taking the gig?
“We have so few regrets with anything,” he says tactfully. “I think it was a good show, but it was a funny one because it was really early in our touring schedule for this album, so we weren’t super-comfortable with the songs. We sort of did it as a challenge to ourselves. I mean headlining a festival, for one, is new for us. And then we got there, and we played after Jay-Z, and it was like, ‘Ohhhhh, boy. I forgot how many songs he has’, and ‘Holy smoke, those 15-year-olds really love Jay-Z!’. It was definitely a learning experience for us.”
This time, he says, it’s going to be different. The band are much more relaxed these days – in fact, most of them will be hanging around after the Picnic for an extended holiday before they head home to put The Suburbs to bed. Don’t be surprised if you’re in the corner of your local some week night following the festival and suddenly hear the beginnings of a sing-song to end all sing-songs.
“Well, the tall redhead will be fine. He looks like a local,” laughs Gara, referring to multi-instrumentalist Richard Reed Parry. “Yeah, there’s talk of boat rides around the countryside, and visiting other cities we’ve never been to, because none of us have really explored Ireland too much. I don’t think any of us have been to Cork, which from what I hear is not too far away and really beautiful. We’re gonna stay in the countryside near the festival and try a slightly different Irish experience. I personally have to run home, which is a bit sad, but at least half the band is going to disperse into the Irish countryside and see where it takes them for a little while.”
You’d think that such an impromptu break would be in stark contrast to the hectic life of a successful band, but Gara claims that all eight members live relatively normal lives when they return to Montreal. There’s are no prima donnas in Arcade Fire, he says, despite their mammoth success.
“Well, it’s like a version of normal. We definitely have normal interests, and we draw a few lines to make sure that we’re not over-the-top or looking to be famous. And even as far as other projects go, we’ve always been 100 per cent free to do whatever we want. I’m mixing a record for a friend of mine right now, and Richie’s always making weird compositions for performances all over the world. It’s a great environment to be in. I think the tricky thing was learning how to manage the time when things really started taking off. But now that we’re comfortable with coming home from tour and switching off, it’s great.”
Public demonstrations of the band’s down-to-earth demeanour have been seen via their charity work for the people of Haiti both pre- and post-earthquake, but surely unexpectedly winning the Grammy for album of the year (beating the likes of Eminem, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga to the punch and triggering a huge number of amusing ‘Who the hell are Arcade Fire?!’ tweets from indignant American pop fans in the process) would inflate even the most lifeless of egos.
“Well, we’re such a big posse that we kind of approach everything – both positive and negative and weird and boring – as a weird gang. So the weekend of the Grammys, and the Brit Awards too, which was two days later – we just really enjoyed it for what it was. There was a sense of just really rolling with how surreal the whole thing was, but it was definitely made easier by the fact that we weren’t on tour at the time. We had been writing music in Montreal for basically the whole winter, so it was literally just hanging out in a loft together, day after day after day, and then a weekend of total chaos. I feel like if we’d been in the middle of a tour, and out and talking to press about it, it probably would have felt a bit more chaotic and had a bigger effect on our egos. But for us, it felt like a coup. We just grabbed them and went home. Now when I look at [the Grammy] right here on my shelf, I think ‘Huh! That was really weird.”
Jetsetting across the Atlantic to scoop prizes at two of the biggest awards ceremonies on the planet – now you’re talking.
“It was totally rock’n’roll,” he says with a chuckle. “We even tried to make it even more rock star-like; we tried to hitch a ride with Cee-Lo Green, because he had a chartered jet that was leaving for London right after his performance at the Grammys – but he was leaving before we were ready to leave. Instead, we just flew coach.”
The gang mentality that Gara speaks of will kick in again later this year once the band get back to Montreal, return to normality and start foraging the scraps that they worked on earlier this year. Although Arcade Fire are a band who thrive on loose concepts – the death and rebirth themes of their celebrated debut Funeral, religion and modern materialism on Neon Bible and the halcyon days of childhood on The Suburbs – they haven’t started to piece together the idea for album number four just yet. Yet it may come sooner than expected, according to Gara.
“At this point, we have a huge collection of bits of songs, some more complete than others, and we’ll just keep picking at them. The nice thing is – well, the nice thing for us, people might get annoyed – but it might take us three years to make a record, or it could take us three months. We really have no idea, but it sort of feels at this point that it could be quick this time, because we’re all able to settle in at home and get creative quite quickly. So it’d be nice to just bang out a record and keep the momentum going.”
A new creative space for the band is in the works too, he enthuses. “We haven’t touched those bits and pieces of songs for a few months, so we’ll have to freshen them up a bit. But the nice thing is that by the time we play Electric Picnic and a couple more shows, we’ll have a new studio space. It’s being built here in Montreal at the moment, and we’re really excited about playing music in it together. Because we’re such a weird, big group that it’s actually kind of a challenge to play music altogether and have it sound reasonable – so once we’re done touring, we’re gonna close the door and dive back in. And we’ll see where it takes us.”
st Arcade Fire play on Saturday
