James Murphy/groovy/...punk? - What we know about the next Arcade Fire album

It's coming up to three years since Arcade Fire's grammy-winning The Suburbs came out - a 16-track journey through the transience and beauty of youth, and the glad acceptance of adult responsibility. The album took the scale and momentum of Funeral and Neon Bible, and brought it back to the suburbs for some not-so-quiet introspection.

Since October last year, according to a CKCU interview with drummer Jeremy Gara, the band are recording "pretty much full time" on an album that should see the light of day in late 2013; but the band are "under no pressure to do anything under any sort of schedule".

The process will doubtless have been slowed by the birth of Regine Cassagne and Win Butler's first child last month. But, if their past work ethic is anything to go by, it'll only spur them on and presumably give them plenty to shout about on the new record.

Having recently sold the church in which they recorded their last two albums, the band have set up shop at DFA records' studios in New York. The label is owned by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, who's been confirmed as working directly with the band on 'three or so songs', and is rumoured to be producing.

According to an interview for BBC6 Music shortly after the Suburbs release, Murphy has been a long time friend of the band, and had to put off producing their last two albums due to conflicting schedules:

"We just met, because everyone just meets on tour... Before Neon Bible i went to Montreal and hung out with them and we talked about doing the record but it didn't work out... it was basically the same time as I was doing Sound of Silver."

At a secret show in Montreal in Dec 2012, the band appeared as 'Les Identiks' and played several new songs. Due to the show's strict 'no video, no photo and no phones' policy, however, the songs have stayed very much under wraps. So much so that, as reported by fan page Arcade Fire tube, 'one guy's phone got thrown against a wall for trying to take a photo'.

The new songs were later described as 'fun, dance-y and groovy', and contained 'only 1 slow song / 1 punk rock-ish song'.

The footage was also filmed, but there's no sign as yet that we'll see any sign of it before the album's release.







So for now, watch the band perform Ready to Start last year and, because it never gets old, Wake Up at Reading 2010, below: