Acclaimed Canadian indie rockers Arcade Fire have announced their first string of shows since 2014, with several festival slots in the mix.
The group will headline the NOS Alive festival in Portugal and the Bilbao BBK Live festival in Spain’s Basque country, as well as being slated to perform in Montreal to benefit a pro-Haiti charity called KANPE. For the benefit performance, they will be joined by guest that include David Byrne, Saul Williams, and Rainn Wilson.
Following the release of acclaimed 2013 album Reflektor and its subsequent tour the following year, members of the band took time off to work on their own solo projects. Multi-instrumentalist Will Butler (brother of the band’s frontman Win) debuted his first solo album, Policy, last year, and the band’s drummer, Jeremy Gara, has a project in the works called Limn.
The band recently made headlines following the death of David Bowie, traveling to New Orleans to perform a tribute to the musician at a memorial parade there, where they were joined by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band in renditions of Bowie’s biggest hits. Bowie was reportedly a big fan of the band, and performed on stage with them when they were still a relatively new group ten years ago.
An extremely popular group spun out of the indie world, it is unclear whether Arcade Fire will add more dates to their scheduled festival and benefit appearances, or if they will simply stick to the big shows this year. The prospect of more dates seems slim; the group have yet to announce a new record, and do not typically do major tours outside of supporting album releases.
To keep tabs on the band’s list of upcoming performances, fans can go to Arcade Fire’s website. Tickets for the KANPE benefit can be found here.
