Arcade Fire unveils dystopian video for Everything Now directed by The Sacred Egg

The Sacred Egg has directed a video for Arcade Fire’s new single Everything Now, an epic dystopian almost-six-minute long film shot in Death Valley, California and South Africa. These locations have provided the vast, barren backdrop to a series of vignettes about life in a “parallel country”.

“The song is both anthemic and melancholy,” explains directorial duo Alex Mavor and Ed Kaye of The Sacred Egg. “The challenge for us was to create something that captured both these moods. Ultimately we wanted to create a magical world but one which had an undercurrent to it. A parallel country that was both familiar and strange. One about corporations and infrastructure and family.  We didn’t want to pass a judgement on it though. It’s for the viewer to make sense of any undertones. We simply tried to capture the mood of this alternate land.”

Showing children playing on crashed satellites, watching scores of rockets take off, and dancing between floating cacti, the video is subtly surrealist and simultaneously desperate and optimistic. The scenes are tied together visually by shots of telephone lines and infrastructure, such as signage emblazoned with the Everything Now globe logo, as well as a performance by the band, wearing Everything Now branded boiler suits.

The video was teased this week with posters, mysterious tweets and a website using the same branding, which was empty but is now populated with information about the band’s upcoming album and gigs.