From pretty much every conceivable perspective, last night's election coverage made for a frustrating, spirit-squishing night of television. But at least we got a new Arcade Fire song out of it! As part of Stephen Colbert's live Showtime election special last night, Arcade Fire showed up to debut a new jam called "Generation A," and they put a whole lot into it. An exhausted and dispirited-looking Colbert described "Generation A" as being "inspired by the current climate of the country, with a hopeful message to the youths." Really, though, the new Arcade Fire song is less hopeful than urgent.
Arcade Fire played "Generation A" live-in-studio, with most of the members of the band masked and with Win Butler giving his new bleach-blonde haircut its TV debut. An adorable little masked kid -- presumably Butler and Régine Chassagne's son -- gave the song a rousing, echoed-out intro, and the band played the song, summoning much of the euphoric intensity that makes their live shows so transformative.
"Generation A," it turns out, is a juiced-up, anthemic track about how the world needs to change right now. Lyrically, the song works as a rebuke to ideas about incremental change, about each generation getting its turn to take over: "They say wait until you're ready/ Wait until your number's called/ They say wait, all we need is love/ But darling, California's burning, New Orleans is waiting for the flood." Musically, it's fired-up synthpop with some of the dejected grandeur of the Who. Watch it below.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KvqNWYggnVA&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=SHOWTIME
Win Butler has said that Arcade Fire recorded "two or three" albums during lockdown, so maybe this is our first taste of one of them.
