The following interview took place in the mood-lit lobby of lower Manhattan's Greenwich

Hotel in mid-August-- one week after Arcade Fire wrapped a packed two-night stand at
Madison Square Garden. And exactly one day after the band's strident third album, The
Suburbs, topped Billboard's albums chart in the U.S. And just mere hours after taping two
songs for that night's episode of "The Daily Show". It's no wonder the band's leader, Win
Butler, was fraying a little. "I feel like I might pass out," he said while taking a seat, his long
legs striking sharp, spidery angles.

But after a few bites of crab and shrimp he looks recharged and ready to chat about his band's
unlikely rise from Canadian curio to Eminem-slaying chart champs with his brother and
bandmate Will. In person, the two mirror their onstage personas-- Win is relatively reserved
and serious, thinking things through before he speaks, while Will is looser, thinking out loud.
We talked about the divide between indie and major, the unwieldiness of the information age,
and why Arcade Fire are a Moby Dick kind of band:

Pitchfork: So The Suburbs is a #1 record in the U.S.

Win Butler: A few days [before the first-week figures were announced], one industry
predictor guy who's very accurate said our album was going to be #2, like 5,000 copies
behind Eminem. But the digital guy who works at Merge was like, "No, it's going to be
number one." He was the prophet because he knew the other predictors weren't counting indie
stores. And the indie stores totally came through and pushed us just over the edge.

Pitchfork: Do you think Eminem is upset about the whole thing?

Win: I hope not. He did sell like 29 million [copies] of his first album.

Pitchfork: A recent New Yorker piece used your success as an argument against major
labels, what's your take on that?

Will Butler: Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of
the fundamentals. They were just flailing about and throwing money around. They weren't
thinking about putting out good music or embracing new things.

Win: When we were getting courted in the

early days of Funeral, we would get taken to
these dinners, and it was just like, "We'll take
the dinner, but who's paying for this?" I guess
Led Zeppelin is. But, at the end of the day, we
were just like, "Would we be paying for other
peoples' dinners?" It's such a weird thing.

It seems like the record industry made so much crazy money in the 1960s that everyone
wanted to get in on it. Now it's just become very corporate. So all of these people who
despise music end up being in charge.

Will: They'd probably be doing fine without the Internet. The way they handled the Internet
was just boneheaded. I know it was terrifying, but I just read Greg Kot's book about
downloading, Ripped, and they were not smart.
Win: But it's certainly not a black-or-white thing. The Flaming Lips have been on Warner
Bros. forever, and certainly everything I heard growing up was on a major label in some way,
from the Cure to Radiohead to Björk. It seems like the Internet really threw them for a loop.

Will: It was great when you had the money behind a label supporting an artist. We've always
had to pay our own way. We split expenses with Merge, which is smart and fiscally
conservative, but it's harder. Every small business runs on debt, you know? Bands go into
debt, and then they make it back over months of touring.

And you got a lot of great music videos out of major label money. It's sad to not have great
music videos anymore.

Pitchfork: You referred to the golden age of major labels and, thematically and sonically, a
lot of what Arcade Fire does has a throwback element. Do you ever wish you could have
started making music in another time?

Will: If we were around in the 60s, who

would we rip off? Glenn Miller? [laughs]
We have some nostalgia about how music
and radio used to be, but it's not a deep
nostalgia. When you get into it, it was all
pretty screwed up the whole time. Then
again, there's an AM station in Montreal
that re-broadcasts Casey Kasem shows
from 30 years ago. I was listening to one from 1972 and the top 10 songs included John
Lennon, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones-- like, nine of the 10 were classic, and #2 was
some horrible schmaltzy 70s song. I don't think I'll be excited about nine of the top 10 songs
on the radio today 35 years from now, partly because I'm an old fogey.

Win: But also because, objectively, those nine songs are better than the nine songs from
today.

Will: It doesn't say that much about music so much as it does about pop radio, which is
almost unrelated to music.

Pitchfork: Part of the reason you guys have been successful has to do with your ambition,
which is embedded into the music. Especially since it doesn't seem like that many
independent bands are interested in that sort of thing nowadays.

Will: We are ambitious, and I think that the general mode of almost all art these days is pretty
small-focused. In literature and in film, the culture is all about these Miranda July-esque
small moments observed in a lovely manner. Nothing against Miranda July, but I think that's
the prevailing aesthetic.

I remember reading a book where the author was making fun of people who liked [Melville's]
Bartleby, the Scrivener instead of Moby Dick-- like favoring a well-crafted short story instead
of his flawed, epic thing. But I think we're definitely much more of a Moby Dick kind of
band, and a lot of bands just aren't. And there are some beautiful small songs out there, and it
would be nice if we could theoretically do a small album. Maybe we will. But the music we
really reacted to growing up was stuff that was a little bigger and more major label.
Pitchfork: Like what?

Will: The original stuff that got me excited about music was Björk and Radiohead and the
weirder spectrum of the bands that were popular and on MTV. Radiohead weren't small in
their focus. It definitely seemed like they were talking about the world at large. I think the
first indie music I heard was Neutral Milk Hotel and the Music Tapes, who were both
Elephant 6 bands on Merge.

Win: When I was living in Boston I

worked in this store that played the college
radio station. I had to listen to it all day,
and I didn't care for most of it. But I
remember the songwriting that really
connected with me, like Magnetic Fields
and Neutral Milk Hotel and early Conor
Oberst. So when we were thinking about
labels, Merge was the one I was most
interested in because their music was done cheaply, but it was really ambitious. Like,
[Magnetic Fields'] 69 Love Songs is an ambitious album even though the production isn't
grandiose. To me, it was more about the intent rather than the sound, because I think a lot of
Magnetic Fields or Neutral Milk Hotel or even some Superchunk songs would sound great
sung by Taylor Swift with slick Nashville production. A song's a song.

Pitchfork: On Suburbs songs like "Month of May" and "Rococo", you describe a certain type
of pseudo-rebellious, cynical youth. Was that the type of kid you were growing up?

Win: I try not get too self-aware when writing lyrics, so I haven't even thought about it that
much. A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career; there are lyrics on this
record that could have been on our first EP. I almost don't want to think about it too much
because it affects the work if you do that.

Pitchfork: "Rococo" sounds especially direct to me when you sing about kids who "seem
wild but they are so tame." I feel like the album does a good job of depicting these modern
youths without judging them, but on that song it seems like you're coming down on things a
little. What is that song based on?

Win: I probably heard about the Rococo period

through Régine, who was really into medieval
art when she was younger. Not like
Renaissance fairs, more like learning ancient
languages. And while there are so many
beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful
artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and
grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.

I had a similar feeling about the current information age, where you have all this information
that you don't need or want but the medium is there so it's filled up. I was trying to think
about this very modern idea using the same language. Also, though it's not really in the song
and I don't think anyone would ever pick it up, that same period was the most opulent time in
French history, and the darkest shit was going on in Haiti at the same time. There are these
images of French aristocrats with big collars and big hair in the jungle in Haiti trying to do
their tea parties with flies buzzing around. That was a little bit of the feeling behind it, too.

Pitchfork: On "Ready to Start", you sing about an emperor who "wears no clothes" that the
kids "bow down to... anyway." Do you ever worry about reaching that kind of level of hero
worship yourself?

Will: We have the #1 record, but we're still not that famous in the scheme of things.

Win: America's a big country. There're still way more people who've never heard of us. For
me, the feeling of "Ready to Start" came from going to art school and meeting a lot of people
who had really defined political ideas and rules about art. But I just wanted to make
something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.

Will: Maybe at some point we'll get to the level where we have to really deal with the devil or
decide to stay small, but so far we've been pretty much able to do what we want to do.

Win: I think you also have to want to be really famous. It's a lot easier to sabotage your
career than to have a career to sabotage [laughs].

The whole article, of which arcade fire speak is focused mainly around the fact that they “go against
major labels”. Reinforcing the idea that the smaller labels can still be successful which link s in with
my target audiences ideology? It could be argued that a lot of artists and members of the public feel
similarly as indie digital labels are on the rise as this article explains.

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/03/indie-labels-bypass-itunes-give-digital-sales-a-shot.ars

http://gizmodo.com/5377302/apple-to-indie-labels-itunes-lp-is-out-of-your-league

The boundaries between major and independent labels, and the definitions of each, differ
from commentator to commentator. In practice, however, the traditional definition of a
'major' record label is one that owns its own distribution channel. Some independent
record labels, in particular those with successful performing artists, sign dual-release
agreements (and make other deals) with major labels and may rely to some extent on
international licensing deals, distribution agreements, and other arrangements with
major record labels. Major labels may also wholly or partially acquire independent labels.

Other nominally "independent" labels are started (and sometimes run) by major label
artists but are still owned at least in part by the major label parent. These spin-off labels
are also frequently referred to as vanity labels or "boutique labels" and are intended to
appease established, powerful artists and/or to give them latitude in discovering and
promoting new talent.
According to Association of Independent Music (AIM) "(...) A "major" is defined in AIM's
constitution as a multinational company which (together with the companies in its group)
has more than 5% of the world market(s) for the sale of records and/or music videos. The
majors are (currently) Sony BMG, Warner, EMI, and the Universal Music Group (which
incorporates Polygram).(...) If a major owns 50% or less of the total shares in your
company, you would not (usually) be owned or controlled by that major. In that case, you
can join AIM."

http://www.residentadvisor.net/record-label.aspx?id=931

Selling out

The phrase is frequently heard in the musical community, where it implies an artist has
compromised their artistic integrity to gain radio airplay or get a recording contract,
especially with a major label. Often, the label forces a particular record producer onto the
performer and insist on the inclusion of songs by commercial songwriters, or the label may
even refuse to release an album, deeming it uncommercial.

This research should help me when aiming for a particular market to aim at, due to the
current dominance of big labels and digital shops such as iTunes, many people still want
to physically have a LP of an album, as do I.