This is most likely the last album of Arcade Fire featuring leader Win Butler, after he announced not to long ago that he would leave the band. WE follows their 2017 LP Everything Now, and it is split in two sides, the three-track I side, about isolation, and the four songs that comprise WE, which touches on reconnection.
They have recorded in many different places like New Orleans, El Paso and Mount Desert Island, and some of the collaborators are Josh Tillman – aka Father John Misty – Portishead's Geoff Barrow and composer Owen Pallett. And this is not the first time we're listening to some of the songs, as they debuted them in Coachella a few weeks ago. WE is a 40-minute album that talks about the forces that threaten to further us from the people we love and the urgent need to overcome them. It is a cathartic experience full of contrasts, a deep and insightful journey into darkness and light, in which they channel fear, loneliness and isolation in the first part – something we've all had to live through these past 3 years – and pure joy and bliss from the power of reconnection in the second part.