Arcade Fire member Will Butler's solo album, Generations, is being released today (Friday, Sept. 25th), and although it was largely written between 2015 and 2019, the subject matter is very timely. It is relative to the global pandemic, as well as the topics of white privilege and racial inequality.
Since releasing his debut solo project, Policy, in 2015, Butler went to the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to study policy, and what he learned is very much integrated into Generations. White privilege is woven throughout the project, however Butler says he doesn't feel comfortable addressing the subject on social media. He told Spin, “I’ve thought about it, and I’ve felt like, ‘Should I be talking about this more?’ It’s just not my skill set. I’m dying to play shows and put together town halls and have weirdo activists open for me at shows, but that’s all stuff that happens in person. I have a skill set that’s pretty good at putting that stuff together. I learn a lot from other people talking online, but I don’t have the toolkit for being online. Maybe I’ll develop it if we stay in a pandemic for years and years. I don’t have a perfect knowledge of the role I can play, but I have a sense of the role I can play in the world, and I try to focus on that.”
Arcade Fire’s plans to work on their next album was thwarted by the pandemic. According to Butler, they are still unsure what direction to take, saying, “It could be a punk record; it could be this kind of record. It just depends on once we get back together — god willing we’ll be able to get back together at some point — it’ll be pretty clear what we’re good at playing and what direction it is, but there’s kind of not a direction yet.”
Arcade Fire's last album, Everything Now, was released in 2017.
