Arcade Fire take The Suburbs to The Daily Show

America's funniest fake news programme is filmed in an unassuming building in the middle of the unremittingly bleak stretch of run-down brownstones and warehouses just west of Midtown Manhattan known as Hell's Kitchen. Once you've obtained backstage clearance, however (with a wristband printed with the words "I am not a threat to The Daily Show"), the place opens up like a Tardis to reveal a rabbit's warren of hallways that appear to meander for miles. There are dogs everywhere: lounging in empty offices, hanging out by the water cooler, possibly running the control room. Open offices reveal huddled writers, TVs all tuned to different channels, and bespectacled comic John Hodgman straightening his tie. Near the Green Room, meanwhile, members of Arcade Fire are spilling out into the hallway like a small, restless army.

Win Butler, the band's unfeasibly tall singer, lyricist and all-around linchpin, looms in the doorway, dressed like a Dust Bowl-era farmer in head-to-toe-denim, while his petite multi-instrumentalist wife and fellow founding member Régine Chassagne flits back and forth in a fizzy bright-blue minidress loudly bemoaning an oncoming cold. Flame-haired guitar- and double bass-player Richard Reed Parry is debating whether or not it would be rude to throw away the unpalatable-looking cherry-flavoured vodka they've found in their Daily Show With Jon Stewart goody bags, while Win's younger brother Will (the band's rabble-rousing keyboard player), tries on various pairs of Ray-Bans with violinists Marika Shaw and Sarah Neufeld. Floppy-haired bassist Tim Kingsbury and drummer Jeremy Gara are sitting on a well-worn couch, debating the relative merits of 80s sitcoms ("Am I really the only one who watched Mr Belvedere?" asks Gara forlornly). There's as much French being spoken as English, and occasionally someone bursts into song. When Stewart stops by for a quick glad-hand, they clamour around him like happy, curious puppies. "How many of you are there?" Stewart asks in mock astonishment. "We only got you two sandwiches!"

The Montreal-based band have had more than a few milestones to toast lately: following a triumphant two-night stand at New York's 19,500-capacity Madison Square Garden arena (the second date of which was filmed by Terry Gilliam – one of Butler's "greatest heroes" and the singer's first choice to do the honours – for a live webcast), their third album The Suburbs entered America's tough-to-crack-if-you're-not-Taylor-Swift Billboard 100 album chart at No 1, knocking Eminem off top spot. And now they're here, preparing to join the ranks of only a handful of musicians ever invited to play The Daily Show, which happens to be one of Butler's favourite shows (Coldplay and the White Stripes have also previously made the grade).

'It doesn't feel like we've changed to meet the world. It feels like the world has just made a little space for us'

That all of this is happening to an eclectic, hurdy gurdy-toting band on a small independent label, who record in their own studio (a decommissioned church), and who have relied on little more than the unstoppable momentum of their barnstorming live performances to generate a reverently fervent following, has escaped few critics' notice. In America, the enormity of Arcade Fire's success is being greeted as some kind of major-label-threatening game changer.

When Butler and Chassagne sneak away from the pre-taping chaos to The Daily Show's conference room (which, for the record, has pictures of dogs pinned to the walls, and buckets – actual buckets! – of Doritos filed away under the bookshelves), Chassagne sits quietly while her husband attempts to come to grips with the band's wild ride.

"We're doing great," he says, nodding vigorously, "but I felt like we were doing great when we got our first gig, or when Merge said they were going to put out our first record. What's happening now doesn't feel unrelated to what we've always been doing, because we're the same band we've always been. I mean, it's wonderful but it doesn't feel like we've changed to meet the world; it feels like the world has just made a little space for us for a minute." For his part, Butler's never been one of those indie purists who believes that big-time success comes hand in hand with a fundamental loss of integrity, anyway. "When I was growing up in the suburbs, I was able to hear and be moved by bands like REM and U2 and Radiohead, which wouldn't have happened unless they had a certain level of distribution," he says. "I mean, I got The Bends because the video was on MTV, not because I was some cool person who knew about something. So I don't take it lightly that we have the opportunity to actually reach people."

'In terms of what you can talk about in songs, nobody's talked about anything yet. Lyrically, there's an infinite amount of space to go'

As it happens, Butler's formative years – spent, mostly, in the numbingly bland outskirts of Houston, Texas – are exactly what the band's new album is all about. The songs revolve around notions of age and change, and the way that the "wasted years" of aimless adolescence can actually prove to be more pure and true than anything else we'll ever experience. Arcade Fire albums are always thematically cohesive – their 2004 debut Funeral was about death and community, while 2007's Neon Bible tackled bigger questions of spirituality, war, and organised religion – but on The Suburbs, the sense of time and place is even more deeply embedded. The songs loop back on themselves lyrically, mirroring the self-contained environment of the 'burbs themselves. There's a lot of sitting in cars, gazing at stars, waiting for life to begin.

The idea for the album came to Butler in 2009, when he received a letter from an old friend he had grown up with in Texas. "He had sent a picture of himself with his daughter on his shoulders at a mall near where my brother and I grew up," he says, "and it was a combination of seeing him as he is now and remembering the past that set me off thinking about feelings and images that could be starting places for songs."

It turned out to be fertile ground. "The original version of the song The Suburbs had so many lyrics that it went on for, like, 14 minutes," Butler laughs. "It was like [mimics a dry heave] bleuuurgh! People get really depressed about the idea that there's nothing new under the sun, but I think in terms of what you can talk about in songs, nobody's talked about anything yet. Lyrically, there's an infinite amount of space to go. And finding these new things to explore from different angles is really what keeps me excited."

Because Arcade Fire are a band known for asking Big Questions, it's tempting to parse their lyrics for deeper meaning, although according to Butler, critics' interpretations often fall far from the mark. When asked whether or not new tune Rococo, for example, is indeed the "anti-hipster anthem" it's been hailed as, Butler laughs so hard his head falls to the table. "There is so little about hipsters that interests me," he says. "I'm definitely not going to, like, write an opera about them." What he was trying to get at, he says, was something else. "I was thinking about how rococo was a baroque style of architecture that got taken to such an extreme it became disgustingly, overly ornate, and how now there's this glut of information everywhere … It's the idea that just because there's a medium for something, people will fill it up with crap."

'We spent a lot of energy trying to make the electronic stuff follow the band rather than having the band follow it … things have to be able to speed up and slow down and sound human'

Sonically, The Suburbs makes some interesting departures from the lushly orchestrated chamber rock that Arcade Fire have become known for. There are still rousing, muscular-but-tender-hearted Springsteen-indebted tracks (the unerringly excellent Modern Man and City With No Children), but this time the band didn't shy away from experimenting with electronica. Sprawl II (sung by Régine) pulses and sparkles like Giorgio Moroder disco, and Empty Room glides along on a sequenced New Order-esque beat. "I always wanted to be able to use synth stuff," Butler says. "Like the Beatles heard Elvis when they were kids, I heard New Order and Depeche Mode; those were the sounds that sounded foreign and exciting to me. But we spent a lot of energy trying to make the electronic stuff follow the band rather than having the band follow it. There's a kinetic energy to what we do, so things really have to be able to speed up and slow down and sound human; it was hard to use those types of sounds while keeping everything loose and organic."

Ultimately, Arcade Fire's gravitational pull comes most strongly from their collective, rambunctious energy – they've been known to play in the streets outside their own shows and incite crowd singalongs with megaphones – and Butler knowingly fans that spark. Just before the band step out into The Daily Show studio to rip through a feverish Ready To Start and Month Of May, he calls everyone over for a group hug. They stand there in the half-light for a few seconds, piled together in a tangle of intertwined arms, swaying; all for one and one for all.

After Stewart introduces them – making much of Butler's six-foot-five stature – he rushes off the stage, proclaiming, "They're the nicest people in the world!" And then the host stands there – watching them on the monitor, just as they will appear to millions of viewers at home – and bobs his head.