Flame on: Arcade Fire's Win Butler responds to Wayne Coyne

Thanks to a tip by commenter spm08588, Pop&Hiss has learned that Win Butler has answered Wayne Coyne's charges of pomposity and overall rude behavior in Rolling Stone, as reported Wednesday. Speaking in a journal entry titled "I still like clouds taste metallic" on the Arcade Fire's Terry Gilliam-meets-"Carnivale" website, Butler responds to Coyne's criticism with what seems to be an air of befuddlement served with a whiff of occasional sarcasm, prefacing his decision on the basis that "people will base their opinion of our band on the media quotes of a guy who doesn't even know us."

He goes on to write, "I am not sure Wayne is the best judge (based on seeing us play at a couple of festivals) if we are righteous, kind and goodhearted people like The Edge and Justin Timberlake (who I am sure he knows intimately as well). I can't imagine a reason why we would have been pompous toward the Flaming Lips, a band we have always loved, on that particular night, all those years ago. Unless I was way more jet-lagged than I remember, I hope i was less of a ... then telling Rollingstone that a bunch of people I don't know at all are really [jerks]...

"At times like these I am comforted by knowing that even though Wayne slammed Beck all those years ago, he seems like a really nice guy to me. I guess everyone has a different idea of what being pompous means."

(Read the full post here.)

Your move, Mr. Coyne. Or maybe not. Maybe this will diffuse the whole situation and we can all go back to throwing confetti, leading marches through arenas and, you know, writing songs.

-- Chris Barton

Photo of Win Butler by Ryan Remiorz / Associated Press

Kids, don't fight: Wayne Coyne slams Arcade Fire

The economy's been flopping around like a stunned perch with seemingly no end in sight, so everyone's a little edgy. But, what better way to distract yourself from depressing unemployment figures than a good ol' fashioned gossipy musician feud?

Flaming Lips frontman and longtime musical birthday party host Wayne Coyne was quoted in Rolling Stone indicating he's had it up to here with those Canadian indie favorites, poking holes in the armor of indie infallibility that Arcade Fire has earned since its much-beloved debut, "Funeral," with an expletive-filled tirade that we can only partially publish here:

"I'm a fan of them on one level, but on another level I get really tired of their pompousness. We've played some shows with them and they really treat people like .... Whenever I've been around them, I've found that they not only treated their crew like ...,  they treated the audience like .... They treated everybody in their vicinity like .... I thought, "Who do they think they are?" I don't know why people put up with it. I wouldn't put up with it. I don't care if it's Arcade Fire or Brian Eno. If either of them walked into a room and treated people like ..., I'd be like, "... you, get outta here.

"People treat Arcade Fire like they're the greatest thing ever and they get away with it. Those sort of opinions change my view of their music. They have good tunes, but they're ... so ... 'em."

The full quote is also available from Sterogum and the good people at Pitchfork, who also reported that Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett jumped into the fray with a (since-deleted) Twitter post that read, "Win (Butler) might not be all hugs and rainbows and kittens, but neither is he drug culture, confetti, pot paraphernalia and ...." (It may not be accurate, but it's far more fun to imagine this being delivered with Pallett in his full-on elfin archer gear.)

Pallet has since updated his Twitter feed to read, "[Insert snarky comment about Flaming Lips here.]."

Let the next step be the trade of good ol' fashioned diss tracks in the tradition of LL Cool J and Kool Moe Dee back in the '80s. With a little luck, this will escalate into a long overdue culture war between the U.S. and Canada that both sides have been dreaming of since Gretzky came to L.A. and one of us built a mostly functioning health care system.

Place your bets, the winner gets to keep Neil Young.

-- Chris Barton

Photo credit: Associated Press