Arcade Fire Premiere New Lyric Video for 'Afterlife,' Bring in Haitian, Rara Music Influences on New Album 2013 'Reflektor'

By Carolyn Menyes c.menyes@gmail.com | Oct 22, 2013 11:57 AM EDT

More details are coming together about Arcade Fire's upcoming fourth studio album. Yesterday (Oct. 21), the "Wake Up" band released a new studio version of a Reflektor track and frontman Win Butler has shed more details on the inspiration behind the album in an interview with Rolling Stone.

As for the new music, Arcade Fire dropped the second official cut from Reflektor, "Afterlife" in a lyric video. Following a premiere on BBC Radio 1, the lyric video eatures footage from the 1959 film Black Orpheus, the track follows in line with lead single "Reflektor" with heavy synth beats and tropical-influenced rhythms. Also like "Reflektor," "Afterlife" clocks in at a relatively lengthy 5-minutes, 59-seconds.

Matching up with some church and religious imagery from Black Orpheus, the lyrics to "Afterlife" contemplate life, death and the meaning of religion in this world. "When love is gone, where does it go / And where do we go?" Butler and wife/bandmate Regine Chassagne sing in the poignant chorus.

Watch the lyric video for "Afterlife" below.

Blending together tropical music with rock and religious imagery is a common theme on Reflektor, due out next week (Oct. 29). In an interview with Rolling Stone published today (Oct. 22), Win Butler spoke about the Haitian and Jamaican influences on his band's new album, as well as how a recent trip to the tropical islands with Chassange changed his worldview.

"There was a band I felt like changed me musically [in Haiti], just really opened up this huge, vast amount of culture and influence I hadn't been exposed to before, which was really life-changing," he told the music magazine.

Butler expanded on the Haitian influences of the record, saying that there's no immediate influence but the essence of the island's genre is there. "I don't think anything is that direct. The more Haitian song on the whole record is 'Here Comes The Night Time,' which is kind of a rara beat, but it's like kind of a hybrid of Haitian rara and Jamaican influence," he explained.

Arcade Fire's new album Reflector will be released Oct. 29.

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