Fire starters

MID-MORNING IN NEW ORLEANS, and outside an Uptown coffee shop, Win Butler is talking of life in his adopted city – the basketball, brass bands and the poisonous caterpillars of the buck moth that, in late spring, fall from the city’s trees on to unsuspecting passersby beneath. He surveys the mighty oaks across the street, broad-branched and strung with moss. “Trees run this city,” Butler says. “They’ve definitely seen some shit, those trees.”

With his wife, Régine Chassagne, Butler is best known for fronting Arcade Fire. The band formed in Montreal at the turn of the millennium, quickly gained a reputation as one of the world’s finest live acts, and over the course of five albums became indie music aristocracy. They were anointed