We

Produced by Nigel Godrich with Win Butler and Chassagne, and named after Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1924 dystopian novel We. Godrich said it was recorded "in the middle of nowhere" outside El Paso, Texas during the Covid lockdown, and that the group "basically lived in a cult for a couple of months". Other sessions took place in New Orleans and on Mount Desert Island in Maine. The cover photograph is by JR, with airbrush tinting by Terry Pastor.

All tracks are credited to Win Butler and Chassagne, with additional writing by Will Butler on "Unconditional II (Race and Religion)", which has backing vocals by Peter Gabriel. Chassagne and Owen Pallett wrote the orchestral arrangements, and Sally Herbert conducted. Will Butler announced in March 2022 that he had left the band amicably after the album was completed in late 2021. In April 2021 the band had put out "Memories of the Age of Anxiety", a 45-minute instrumental, on the Headspace app. The first single, "The Lightning I, II", came out on 17 March 2022, and the band played on Saturday Night Live the day after the album was released.

Reception

It reached number one in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Portugal, and number six in the US with 32,000 units, the band's fifth top-ten debut there. Metacritic scored it 73 from 29 reviews. It was longlisted for the 2022 Polaris Prize and nominated for the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album.

Neil McCormick of the Telegraph and Helen Brown of the Independent each gave it five stars. Alexis Petridis of the Guardian wrote a mixed review, calling it some of the band's most straightforward music and its lyrics peevish, yet an improvement on Everything Now. Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic thought the singles would please fans of the early albums.