Splendid: What's the deal with the four "Neighborhood" songs? Are they meant to be a suite?

Win Butler: Well, there are unifying themes, but I don't know if you have to listen to all of them in order to understand some grand plot. I mean, they all have the word "neighborhood" in them, so there's a start...

Splendid: It's also a very wintery album. I love that line about "digging a tunnel from my window to yours", which is, I think, something that would only make sense if you'd lived in a northern place. How does living in Montreal affected the way you write music?

Win Butler: About a year before I moved to Montreal, there was a big power outage in Montreal in the middle of winter. There were about ten days where some parts of Montreal didn't have any electricity. So you walked around St. Catherine and there was no light in any of the buildings. It was like this great equalizing force. You could have a giant mansion and you were still freezing and huddled together with your neighbors around a fire. So I don't know -- there's this like... this idea that everything can be equal really fast and... I don't know... there's all these underground shopping malls and everyone tries to stay under ground as much as they can.

Splendid: So that line "the power is out in the heart of man", that's about that storm?

Win Butler: The basic idea. Regine and I wanted to write something about the power outage.

Splendid: But it's a metaphor, too.

Win Butler: Yep.

Splendid: But it sounds like it's a positive thing, that it brings people together?

Win Butler: Well, people turn into wolves also, but I think that's happening already. It just kind of raises the stakes, I think. But it does kind of shake up the regular routines.

Splendid: Yeah... I'm noticing a really powerful rhythmicness to your music. Like a lot of times, there'll be this bass drum pounding on the quarter notes and really complex orchestral stuff going on on top of that. Is it something where you feel like you have to ground your music with the rhythm, or does it start with the rhythm?

Win Butler: It doesn't really start with the rhythm. I think we were kind of surprised at how many of the songs had four on the floor. It's just like the way we were writing the songs, just bashing them out, and kind of doing bizarre stuff with the other instrumentation, but keeping the drums really simple.

Splendid: It's a very cool sound, kind of triumphant -- it reminds me a little bit of the Constantines, who I guess you know and have played with.

Win Butler: Yeah, tons of times.

Splendid: I know your wife's family is from Haiti and escaped, I guess, during the Duvalier regime. There's a song called "Haiti" on the album. Is there a story about her family escaping?

Win Butler: Well, she had a bunch of family members who got killed during that period. They were kind of in the intellectual class and they were the first to be... even as recently as five years ago, even post-Duvalier, I was reading about this, some Ton Ton Macoutes went to a school, a university, and killed a bunch of kids. They had a group that was against the government... but Regine's great-uncle was an ambassador from Haiti to a bunch of countries. He was a doctor and he actually gave up his practice and went to Cuba to train with Castro, to learn army stuff to try and attack, to go back to Haiti and try to liberate it. And the whole thing just fell apart. They got there and one of them told a priest what was happening, and the priest told the police and they got stopped. It's just kind of been like that forever.

Splendid: Horrible. Let's talk about "Rebellion (Lies)", which seems like it might be especially relevant now that people are so frightened and depressed by what's going on in the world. Did you see it as a political song or is it more of a personal statement?

Win Butler: I think when you live in really policized times it's hard to...

Splendid: To separate?

Win Butler: The issues overlap. Doing anything has a political element to it, but that's really not the source of the song. It wasn't written out of a political sentiment, but it is kind of about a pied piper image, which I think lends itself really well to the political situation.

Splendid: Yeah... there are all these lyrics about hiding under the covers, which I think is how a lot of people feel these days in the states.

Win Butler: Yeah.

Splendid: What I love about your songs is that they're packed with all these instruments and ideas going on at once. How do you make a song like that? Do you start with something really bare and simple and go from there, or do you hear it that way from the start?

Win Butler: I think there's a lot of adding and trying to find what's appropriate sonically. A lot of people play a lot of instruments, so we have a lot of things we can use to try to craft a sound for a song. But, yeah, I'm sure...(his voice drifts off) My brain is leaving my body.

Splendid: You must be doing a lot of these interviews.

Win Butler: Yeah, a decent number. Just don't ask me how the band formed.

Splendid: (laughs) Okay. That's in your bio anyway.

Win Butler: Yeah.

Splendid: You mentioned all these instruments and I was looking at the liner notes; it looks like everyone in the band plays xylophone, which is a very unusual instrument for a rock band.

Win Butler: Yeah, xylophone's a tough instrument... you don't even need a mic for it. Most places it cuts through the sound.

Splendid: You just had them lying around?

Win Butler: We have a lot of xylophones for some reason. I don't know how that happened, but we have a lot of them lying around.

Splendid: It's such a happy little sound. You also use the accordion a lot.

Win Butler: Regine plays accordion and Richard is not quite as good but can sort of hack his way through.

Splendid: Isn't it pretty hard to play?

Win Butler: Well, usually we're not playing the left hand, the really tricky part. The right hand is just like a piano. But it's a workout. Regine's right arm is very strong, more so than her left.

Splendid: It's one of those instruments where you have to do two things at once. So, tell me about your string arrangements. You have a violinist, Sara Neufeld? Do you bring a song to her and she thinks of how the strings will sound? How does that work?

Win Butler: Not really. It really varies. Sometimes me and Regine will have an idea for a line. Owen Pallett, who plays with the Hidden Cameras, will come up with a lot of cool string ideas. But it's kind of a collective thing.

Splendid: Do you jam a lot? Is that one of the ways you come up with songs?

Win Butler: Yep. Usually the songs... this is changing, but at least on this record, a lot of the song structures, basically, me and Regine brought to the table. But we're starting to create more and more stuff from the ground up.

Splendid: And that works pretty well, writing songs with your wife?

Win Butler: Yes... yes it does.

Splendid: I tried to work with my husband once, and we almost killed each other.

Win Butler: Well, definitely it makes it more complicated, but I don't know. I think that there are already so many issues to deal with in a relationship that if you throw another one on there, it's not the end of the world.

Splendid: Did you work out most of the songs on the album in performance, were they all pretty much set before you started recording?

Win Butler: No. "Haiti" we had never played before. Until the very last day, we were trying to figure out the vocal melody. We tried a million different things. We tried bringing it down to the sound of basic drums and that didn't work. It was a really tough one to find a vocal sound for... certain things, like "Wake Up", we had played a bunch live. Some of them really did come out of the live performance. But "Rebellion (Lies)" was written during the recording process.

Splendid: What was it about the vocal in "Haiti" that made it so hard to get down?

Win Butler: I don't know. We kept doing it as... we had an instrumental version that sounded really good. We were excited about it. But every time we added a vocal, it made it sound worse. Finally, we just managed...it was just about the way the vocal set in that overall sound. We finally found a way that actually added to it and made it a lot better. When we were all done, it was actually one of my favorite ones, listening back to it. But we were really not sure that it would be on the record until the last minute.

Splendid: Now, you recorded this partly at your apartment and partly at a studio in Montreal? How was the working environment? What was it like?

Win Butler: The studio is a couple of blocks from our house. Our drummer at the time, Howard, runs the studio. It was a really good environment to work in. We got really comfortable. It felt like a second home. We had as much time as we wanted. We had the keys and we were in there all night for four days in a row doing overdubs, you know. And then we did a bunch of overdubs at home, too, so we wouldn't have to be paying the studio all the time. It worked out really well for us.

Splendid: Yeah, it sounds great. So which do you like better, performing live or recording? Or do they both have things that you like about them?

Win Butler: Ah... They're two totally different things and they're both maddening in their own way. But there's some perks also.

Splendid: What's maddening about it?

Win Butler: In recording, the mixing and mastering period is like... I hate it so much. You're listening to a song 50 times in a row and you just start to hate it. You're like, "why am I doing this?" Playing live, I have a really hard time throwing out my voice, and after about two weeks of croaking out songs, it gets pretty depressing. At the same time, it's amazing to play for people and travel and have all the different new dishes in all the different towns.

Splendid: When you go out and play live now, are people starting to know your songs before you perform them?

Win Butler: Yeah. It's a different thing, a different experience.

Splendid: That must be cool, to look out and see people mouthing the words.

Win Butler: Yeah, it's a totally ... we really have grown accustomed to playing for people that have never heard us before. We've learned to kind of hit people over the head. It's a different energy if people already know the songs. In a way, it kind of takes some of the weight off. You just put the songs across. You don't have to drop bombs on everyone all the time.

Splendid: Well, I've never seen you play, but it sounds like you would have a really exciting show, with lots of instruments going on and really high energy.

Win Butler: It comes across a bit punkier live. It's a different sound. Most of the bands I like sound pretty different live.

Splendid: Yeah, it's true and most of them sound louder and more hard-edged. So, I know you guys had a really good CMJ and there's a lot of interest in your band right now. Do you have any thoughts on why your music is resonating with people? Is there anything about it that fits with the times or fills a need?

Win Butler: No, I mean... we're not the type of band that has decided on a certain kind of sound that we're going to have, and we're like, "let's make songs that are like this." We're a bit more focused on the songs themselves and trying to find the songs, as opposed to making a consistent sound. I don't know that the times have that much to do with it. I guess sometimes music comes out and no one ever hears it and it's obviously good music. I'd like to think that it's somewhat related to the record being good, but maybe it's just a crapshoot. I don't even know any more.

Splendid: Well, it's definitely a really good record -- but in my experience, there are a lot of really good records, and only some of them catch fire in the way that yours did.

Win Butler: I don't have any experience to know.

Splendid: Are things getting a little strange now? I know there was the big New York Times article about how you were flavor of the month. It seems like there's a lot of frenzy about you guys.

Win Butler: I don't know. It's kind of funny. It's not the end of the world.

Splendid: Do you have any good stories about weird things that have happened now that you've become so popular?

Win Butler: We're really not that popular. Maybe 60,000 people in the entire world have heard us. It's not like we're approaching U2 status. I think it's pretty normal. Maybe this year I'm going to get paid slightly less than a teacher at an elementary school. So I'm pretty stoked about that.

Splendid: That is kind of depressing, isn't it.

Win Butler: Yeah.

Splendid: I know you've gotten some really nice support from other bands. I just saw a mention of your band in a piece by Tegan and Sara in the Sunday New York Times and I guess the Constantines have been supportive. What kind of scene is there in Canada?

Win Butler: I've never met Tegan and Sara. I don't know who they are. I'm not Canadian, but yeah, we've been really lucky. Our first few shows were in Toronto and we got to play with some other bands. We got to play with the Constantines and the Hidden Cameras and a band called Wolf Parade in Montreal that's really amazing. And the Unicorns took us on tour. The guys in Godspeed have been really helpful... just in getting advice about stuff. I feel lucky.

Splendid: Have you written much new material since Funeral?

Win Butler: Yeah, that's what we've been doing in the last couple of weeks -- writing material. We've got a few new songs to try out.

Splendid: Are you making any kind of dramatic change?

Win Butler: I don't know. If the music changes, it will. It's kind of always changing. It's hard for people to tell when they only know one record. We have hundreds of songs. It's a very wide range. I think the shows that we do a wide range of things.

Splendid: Sometimes people finish a record and there's about a year before it gets out to the public, and during that year, they may have really gotten a lot of other ideas and be sort of ahead of the record, but people are still asking them to play the songs from the record.

Win Butler: I like playing songs that are on the record. It's nice to do that. You just kind of start to feel crazy when you're opening bank accounts and making phone calls and not writing new songs. It doesn't feel good.

Splendid: But better than the alternative, right?

Win Butler: It's better than... yeah, working in a mustard factory.

Splendid: Do you all still have day jobs?

Win Butler: Well, our day job is going to be doing this tour and then see where we're at.

Splendid: What are you going to do after the tour? Will you be working on another album?

Win Butler: I don't know. It's not clear when the tour is going to stop at this point. We're going to have a break in February. Then we're doing some shows in Europe. The record's coming out over there in February. I don't know. Hopefully this spring, we'll get to do some recording and work on a bunch of new stuff. It's bizarre to be planning things six months in advance for me. It's like... what in the hell has happened to me. The fact that I know what I'm going to be doing eight months from now is kind of terrifying.

Splendid: But it's all good stuff. It must be sort of exciting, too.

Win Butler: It's better than the alternative. But yeah, I'll be in Holland in March and April... and I'm used to being like, well, today, I will go to the convenience store and get some apple juice and write some songs all day. It's not structured.