New Arcade Fire for May 2010?

Things apparently are "better." Oh, and something about live dates, too.

By Fred Mills

Yesterday both Billboard and the BBC broke the news that the Arcade fire is just about done with its next album and is eyeing a May release. It will be the followup to 2007's Neon Bible and features, as with that album, the engineering talents of Markus Dravs (Bjork, Coldplay, Maccabees, Mumford and Sons).

While the Arcade Fire has been notoriously close-mouthed about the sessions, the BBC was able to pry some details out of the latter group's Marcus Mumford, who apparently got his news directly from Dravs.

"I don't know if I'm allowed to say this but yeah, he's working on the next Arcade Fire record at the moment," said Mumford. "I'm sure that's public knowledge, because he's been there for about six months. I keep asking Markus how it's going and he's like, 'Yeah, it's okay', and I'm like, 'What are the songs like?' And he goes, 'Better'."

Well there you go. That's what we in the biz call "really specific and detailed information"...

Billboard wasn't able to supply much more, only adding that their "sources" say a single will precede the album, and that the group is "weighing multiple offers" for live dates, including summer festivals.