Arcade Fire kicked off March teasing new music via postcards to their fans with music notation on them. The band has been due for an album; their last LP was 2017’s Everything Now, whose marketing involved Kendall and Kylie Jenner tour shirts and $109 fidget spinners. After recently announcing that a new single would arrive this week and then joining TikTok to preview it, the Canadian indie-rock influencers debuted several songs at their performances at the Toulouse Theatre in New Orleans.
Per setlist.fm, their Sunday night set included new tracks “Rabbit Hole” and “Age Of Anxiety,” as well as “Generation A,” which they performed once on Colbert in 2020. At last night’s show (a Ukraine benefit concert), they performed “The Lightning I, II” for the first time. Despite being no-phone shows, there’s footage from a TikTok livestream.
“Age Of Anxiety” is different from “Memories Of The Age Of Anxiety,” the song they made for the app Headspace last year. When the band performed “Generation A” on Colbert, the host said that the track was “inspired by the current climate of the country with a hopeful message to the youths.” This new record seems to be very conscious of the state of the world right now.
Watch Arcade Fire perform “The Lightning I, II” above and “Age Of Anxiety” below.
