It’s been nearly a year since Arcade Fire released Everything Now, but 2018 seems like the right time to release a visual for the album’s centerpiece track “Chemistry.” “When times are really crazy and fucked up, you have to be able to rely on the absurd. It’s a valuable response to the insanity,” Win Butler explains over the phone before boarding a plane that will take him and his band to Europe to resume the Everything Now Continued Tour. “I think it’s confusing to people if we make something that’s not super serious. [But] one of the pieces of our catalog is, ‘Don’t take it too serious; it’s really light.’”
That ethos is at the heart of the track, as well as its video. Directed by Ray Tintori the clip tells the story of an animated cat (played by Tootie Tootz from Big Freedia: Queen of Bounce) and a dog who fall in love under…interesting circumstances.
Butler said about the visuals, and working with Tintori, and the band’s ever-evolving partnership with New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band, as well as why they don’t tour as much as other bands of their stature. Watch the “Chemistry” video, check out an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the recording of “Chemistry” in-studio in New Orleans. An alternate mix of “Chemistry,” from the 2017 album “Everything Now,” recorded live in the studio in New Orleans.
The Fat Angel Sings 