When Will Butler thought about making his own album, he had a few variables to consider. Chiefly: the routine timetable for his other music gig. “Arcade Fire albums come out every three years,” he explains. “So once the tour ends, you usually get a year of life, and then the next album starts.” So with the band's Reflektor trek slowing to a halt last summer, the 32-year-old multi-instrumentalist knew his window was approaching. “I was like, ‘Oh shit, I gotta do this before I don't have any time to do it.’" Equipped with a few songs built from fragments he’d been toying with for years, he booked time at Manhattan’s famed Electric Lady Studios—though he’s quick to downplay the weight behind the studio's name, clarifying that he was in the smaller Studio C, not the hallowed Studio A, where the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix recorded classic albums. "I was where U2 mixed Songs of Innocence," he says.
The resulting record, Policy, isn’t easily pinned down. After he’s done playing synthesizers and flirting with new wave on one track, he’s delivering a funk tune with big digital bleats and a spoken-word chorus, or doing his best Buddy Holly rockabilly melodies, or desperately emoting over a piano in melancholic singer/songwriter mode. “I'm drawn to every genre,” Butler says over Skype from Montreal. Sure, he could have gone full rockabilly over 10 songs a la Neil Young’s Everybody’s Rockin’, or made an all-instrumental ambient record, but he’s not interested in limiting himself. “It's just the modern musical world,” he says, “people are listening to Steve Reich and Ghostface and 1940s Trinidadian music all the time.”
Though he’s had the idea of a solo album in the back of his mind “forever,” Butler’s Oscar nomination alongside Owen Pallett for their work on the soundtrack for Spike Jonze's Her moved things to the fore. Even though the score was another group project with Arcade Fire, Butler’s name was thrust forward on the nominations list. “Suddenly, in the eyes of the world, I'd already done a solo album,” he says. They lost the trophy to Gravity, but the experience encouraged him to put more “just-Will Butler” music out there. He’s not thinking short-term, either. At one point in our conversation, he compares Policy to Neil Young’s debut self-titled album, saying that it’s just the first of many statements to come. “Part of the goal of this record is to make people excited enough to pay attention when I'm 80,” he says.
Pitchfork: Did you feel at all nervous or vulnerable when you played these solo songs live for the first time?
Will Butler: A little bit, but I do so many embarrassing things in public that I wasn't that worried. At the Barclays Center [with the Arcade Fire], I took off my shirt and put on a bobble head and pretended to dance like David Byrne while rubbing my tummy.
Pitchfork: How would you compare working on this project to being in Arcade Fire or doing the Her score?
WB: In Arcade Fire and with Her, a large portion of my role was compromise—I sit at the table and work things out. Particularly with the Her score, because you have the director, Spike [Jonze], who was very opinionated, but with no [musical] vocabulary. He’d say, "Can we put a different melody there?" And I was like, "There is no melody there. It's just… what do you mean by melody?"
Pitchfork: This is the part of the interview where you throw Spike Jonze under the bus.
WB: He made a very good movie, though. He managed to communicate his point of view enough for us to make a good score, so I'm not worried about his feelings.
Pitchfork: When this album was announced, it was described as “American music.” Why is that distinction important to you?
WB: Because I can only think of art in a local, parochial kind of way—the only thing I've spent time developing is my English, and it's American English. Deep down, that’s all I have. And the album is responding to music that's rooted in America; a lot of our music that's been so wildly influential around the world—rock’n’roll, hip-hop, jazz—has been made by young, excited people doing crazy things. So I wanted to tap into that adolescent energy a bit, while I'm no longer an adolescent.
Pitchfork: When you look at other artists making records by themselves, do you feel aware of the benefits that come from being in a very popular band?
WB: It's extremely luxurious, both because people will pay some attention to it regardless of the quality [laughs], and also because I'm working with a safety net. I'd love to work without a safety net, but it's also nice to have one. It's like, “OK, if this fails, I've still got other irons in the fire.” It's not a vanity thing, like, "I'm gonna make an album now!" It's driven by an artistic drive. But I definitely have a sense of how luxurious it is.
Pitchfork: Do you feel like you're setting expectations with this record and that you’ll be expected to make another record with Policy’s template next time?
WB: I feel that I could do anything. There’s this Marc Maron interview with Louis C.K. where [Louis] talks about how he does his material for a year and then he throws it all away and does his next thing. He also talked about doing comedy in front of a live studio audience. I don't want to be driven by what people say or think, but in a certain sense, I want to respond to how people respond to the record. If people love this record, maybe I'll put out Metal Machine Music next. There is an element of audience response determining how I move forward. I have songs that I'll be playing on tour that I'd record in an instant and put out—but I want to see how I dance with the lady before I marry her.
Pitchfork: Are you planning on making more records?
WB: My goal as an artist is to have a career like Yeats—you get better, you win the Nobel Prize, and then you keep doing good stuff after you win the Nobel Prize. He's the only person who's ever done that, but that's my goal.