Arcade Fire launch new ‘Past Lives’ series, sharing archive gig footage

Arcade Fire have launched a new archive series, sharing footage from past gigs during the summer.

Past Lives will see the band sharing performances from across their career, beginning today (June 25) with a performance from their ‘Everything Now’ tour in 2017.

“We cannot wait to play live for you all again,” the band wrote to fans in an email newsletter announcing the new series. “But until then… this summer we will be revisiting some of our past live performances.

“Videos will be posted Wednesdays and Fridays,” they added, sharing a performance of ‘No Cars Go’ from their headline set at Primavera Sound 2017 in Barcelona to begin.

See that performance below.

Back in April, the band shared a new 45-minute song titled ‘Memories of the Age of Anxiety’ for a meditation and sleep app.

The instrumental was created for the Headspace app, which offers meditation and mindfulness skills “on everything from managing stress and everyday anxiety to sleep, focus and mind-body health”.

‘Memories of the Age of Anxiety’ is Arcade Fire’s first new piece of material since they debuted the track ‘Generation A’ back in November while performing on Stephen Colbert’s US election special. That song has yet to be officially released, however.

Reviewing the live version of ‘Generation A’, NME wrote: “Arcade Fire are at their best when they become a rousing orchestra, greater than the sum of its parts and with the ability to make you feel anything is possible. On ‘Generation A’, this blood-and-thunder approach returns with a vengeance – and by God we need it right now.”

The band’s last studio album, ‘Everything Now’, came out in 2017. Back in October, frontman Win Butler told Rick Rubin on his Broken Record podcast that he’d written “two or three” Arcade Fire albums during the coronavirus-enforced lockdown.

“We had been writing for a year and were doing our first session towards the record when Covid came down,” he said, adding: “I’ve just been writing, like I can’t remember a time where I’ve written more.”