Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 03/02/2012 at 11:03 AM News

The Popdust Files: abraham's daughter, arcade fire, hunger games, upcoming soundtracks

So is every song on this Hunger Games soundtrack going to sound like The Civil Wars? It seems like the Wars’ indoomy folk-rock sound is going to dominate the movie, including on this new track from The Arcade Fire: “Abraham’s Daughter,” which will be the first track on the soundtrack album (“Songs From District 12 and Beyond”) but the last song heard in the movie, played over the ending credits. The song is a lurching, atmospheric ballad with singer Régine Chassagne singing what sounds like a classic folk melody in a haunting (if somewhat indecipherable) high-pitched tremble. It’s not as anthemic as their best songs, but it’s cool and moody and foreboding and such just the same.

More importantly, it’s appropriately cinematic for a band whose music has backdropped countless film trailers and dramatic, high-concept videos, and whose Grammy-winning Suburbs album sounded like a soundtrack to an imaginary Faulkner film adaptation or some such. “Our whole approach was to get into the world and try to create something that serves the story and the film,” explained frontman Win Butler. “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 [Hunger Games character] Katniss.” Get all that? Cool.

Listen to “Abraham’s Daughter” over at EW, and check out a classic cinematic Arcade Fire cut below while you’re at it: