With his eagerly-awaited new solo album arriving at the end of next week, Arcade Fire frontman Will Butler has now unveiled the next cut to be lifted from his forthcoming full-length.
The new single 'Bethlehem' follows on from the previously shared tracks 'Close My Eyes' and 'Surrender' in previewing his new LP 'Generations', which arrives on the 25th September via Merge Records.
Speaking about the new offering, he said, "This song partly springs from The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats: "what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?" Like a lot of folks, I woke up after the election in 2016 mad and sad and scared and exhausted. This song is born of that emotion.
"My bandmates Jenny Shore, Julie Shore and Sara Dobbs sing the bridge, and it’s a corrective to my (appropriate?) freaking out - this isn’t the apocalypse. You’re misquoting Yeats. Get your fucking head on straight. History has not ruptured - this shit we’re in is contiguous with the shit we’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But still, we sometimes do need an apocalyptic vision to make change. Even if it’s technically wrong. I dunno. It’s an ongoing conversation."
Check out the new video for 'Bethlehem' in the player below.
