TORONTO -- Anyone who has seen Arcade Fire live knows that Will Butler doesn't like to sit still.

The younger Butler brother is a combustible bundle of twitchy energy onstage, so it's no surprise that his debut solo album, "Policy," is a restless firecracker that manages to showcase -- in only eight songs -- more styles than a department store.

As he initially spun the new sounds for his Arcade Fire bandmates -- including frontman brother Win -- on the road during the "Reflektor" tour, it was the album's wandering nature that most stood out.

"Everyone's response was similar," Butler explained recently in a telephone interview from Montreal.

"It was like: 'Oh, I mean, it's very diverse, which I like. But will people like it? You should think about if you want it to be so diverse or if you should stylistically unify it.'

"I experimented with focusing the esthetic," he added later, "and I couldn't maintain it for more than 15 minutes."

The record's sprawling range is understandable given Butler's panoramic instrumental aptitude. Over the course of four Arcade Fire records, he's been credited with playing: guitar, piano, bass (electric and upright), synth, clarinet, organ, sitar, trombone, panpipes, glockenspiel, musical saw, omnichord, xylophone, concertina and gadulka.

Then there's the lengthy gestation period for "Policy."

Butler began considering the shape of his eventual first solo album as a teenager growing up in Houston's suburbs, though he never expected -- nor really lamented -- how long it would take to actually come together.

"To be honest, in general, I am perfectly fine being ... in Arcade Fire -- it's perfectly artistically satisfying," said Butler, an Oscar nominee for his musical contribution to Spike Jonze's masterpiece "Her."

"It was more just that a chance came, and I was like: 'This is totally the perfect time to do an album on my own. Let's do it."'

On scrappy punkish opener "Take My Side," he channels the vigorous sexual frustration of early Violent Femmes or Richard Hell and the "pheromones and hormones" of being a teenager.

On the very next track, "Anna," he's icy and detached, crooning hypnotically over bass, synth and jabbing flashes of sax, singing lyrics that evolved from a nonsense song he wrote for his toddler son (who's a "very good drummer," Butler notes). Next up? A brittle piano lament ("Finish What I Started").

A poetry major, Butler's first turn as primary lyric-writer found the 32-year-old trying to avoid over-thinking.

"I would say 80 per cent of the great lyrics in this world are crappy poetry," he said, laughing. "But they live. The music makes them really live and be really meaningful."

The record is light-hearted in a way that Butler's other outfit often isn't (though it does feature drummer Jeremy Gara).

And on his first solitary sojourn, Butler likewise strayed from Arcade Fire's notoriously arduous creative process.

"Collaboration with amazing artists is such a joy but it is a lot of psychological work," he said. "But this time around, it was perfectly liberating and exciting and fun."