The spring’s most epic film — “The Hunger Games” — now has an equally epic closing-credits track from Grammy-winning indie rockers Arcade Fire, titled “Abraham’s Daughter.” Listen below.
“Abraham’s Daughter” takes the “Hunger Games” soundtrack to a more intimidating place than its previously-released first single, the gentle and folksy “Safe and Sound,” from Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars. From its military-style percussion to the industrial distortion that opens and closes the track, the Regine Chassagne-led “Abraham’s Daughter” channels the film and book franchise’s strong dystopian themes.
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Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler told Entertainment Weekly of the track, “I tried to put myself in the headspace of how excited I’d be if this film was coming out when I was 15. I still remember hearing Radiohead’s ‘Exit Music (for a Film)’ in [director Baz Luhrmann’s] ‘Romeo + Juliet’ when I was that age.”
Butler continued: “Our whole approach was to get into the world and try to create something that serves the story and the film. There’s something in the story of Abraham and Isaac that I think resonates with the themes in the film, like sacrificing children. So we made a weird, alternate-universe version of that, where it’s as if Abraham had a daughter — kind of a metaphor for Katniss [the protagonist].”
“Abraham’s Daughter” marks the Canadian band’s first new material since the August 2010 release of “The Suburbs,” which took home the coveted Album of the Year award at the 2011 Grammys. The song is not Arcade Fire’s only contribution to “The Hunger Games,” in theaters March 23; the band also contributed a facist national anthem of sorts, titled “Horn of Plenty,” to the film score. AF fans, don’t get too excited: “It’s not a pop song or anything,” Butler warns.
View the full tracklist for the “Hunger Games” soundtrack, out March 20, here.