After burning up the stage on Saturday Night Live over the weekend Arcade Fire clearly had plenty more gas in the tank. The band stopped by the BBC’s iconic Maida Vale Studios this week to put their rocking spin on Harry Styles‘ most recent single, “As It Was.” The original version of the song from Harry’s upcoming third solo album, Harry’s House, has a kind of bouncy 1980s new wave A-Ha vibe, but the Arcade crew found a fifth, more raucous gear in their goosed arrangement.
Doubling the tempo, the band gave the track a renewed, frantic urgency, with singer Win Butler sounding angsty and breathless over a mix that included violin, keyboard, marimba, driving guitars and tubular bells. The session also found the band performing the slow-burn “The Lightning I, II” from their new album, WE, which they also performed on SNL in a thrilling fashion and that album’s “Age of Anxiety (Rabbit Hole).”
Earlier this week, Arcade Fire announced the dates for the U.K./European leg of their upcoming tour in support of WE, which will launch on Aug. 30 in Dublin, and runs through dates in London, Paris, Milan, Madrid, Berlin and Warsaw before jumping to the U.S. for a fall swing.
The North American dates will kick off on Oct. 28 at The Anthem in Washington, D.C., with slated stops in Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., and a Dec. 1 date at the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. The U.K./European dates will feature opening sets from Feist, with Beck on board to perform acoustic sets on the North American gigs. Tickets for the shows will go on sale on Friday (May 13).
Watch Arcade Fire light up “As It Was” below.
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