Arcade Fire score their fourth UK Number One album with ‘WE’

nme.com:

Arcade Fire have scored their fourth UK Number One album with their sixth studio album ‘WE’.The Canadian collective shot straight to the top of the album chart and the vinyl albums chart, with their latest record beating Sigrid‘s ‘How To Let Go’ into second place, according to the Official Charts Company.It comes after their previous LPs – 2010’s ‘The Suburbs’, 2013’s ‘Reflektor’ and 2017 album ‘Everything Now’ also went to Number One.Frontman Win Butler recently told the NME Big Read, that the album title was inspired by the 1924 dystopian novel WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which itself inspired George Orwell’s 1984.“The seeds of everything that we’re ever going to do are within us,” he explained. “Reading that Zamyatin novel connected this dot in my childhood, then to Orwell, and then allowed me to be inspired by its own merits.“I didn’t know what ‘WE’ was, but I knew that it was in there and that I’d use it at some point.

I think conceptually within ‘WE’, there’s a universe that connects the dots between everything we’ve ever done.”The record was awarded four stars by NME and was described as the band’s “most focussed record since ‘The Suburbs’.”Elsewhere in the album chart, Jack Harlow‘s new album ‘Come Home The Kids Miss You’ went in at Number Four and Ed Sheeran’s ‘=’ went in at five.

Soft Cell also made their return with their first album in 20 years, ‘Happiness Not Included’ at Number Seven while Belle & Sebastian‘s ‘A Bit Of Previous’, went in at eight and Halestorm landed at nine with ‘Back From The Dead’.In the singles chart, Harry Styles continues to reign with ‘As It Was’, racking up a sixth consecutive week at Number One with the new single while Jack Harlow remains at two with ‘First Class’..