The seminal indie rockers' snap a supposedly unstoppable streak of classic albums, ditching the thrilling, passionate songs of youth, for flat, spiritless impressions of dance music to undeveloped concepts
When one listens to most indie rock songs, there is a common musical motif that seems to characterise the genre: 'the millenial whoop'. This popular stereotype was interestingly pioneered by a close of group of friends (and lovers) from Montreal, who formed what most would consider one of the most influential bands of the 21st century, Arcade Fire. The motif first appeared in their hit single 'Wake Up' from their groundbreaking 2004 debut, Funeral. There was something about the note, the length of it, and the power of their collective voices simultaneously launching out into the night sky, that resonated so deeply with young music listeners, that it eventually trickled its way into pop music during the noughties. Their climactic powerhouses exorcised innermost pains of unrequited, adolescent love. Indie was the place to be for young rock musicians, and it is where they still are now. Indie rock unquestionably remaining the most popular form of rock music right now. The reason I outline this common trope of their parent genre that Arcade Fire popularised, is because it is crucial to understanding what Arcade Fire have been so great at - conveying a potent sense of youthful passion.
Their rise in popularity and acclaim was so quick that within less than a year of them releasing, Funeral, they found themselves playing live alongside art rock legend David Bowie in New York, marrying both of their glamorous and artsy approaches to rock music. Their next two albums, Neon Bible (2007) and The Suburbs (2010), cemented this recognisable trademark of theirs, and their place in wider popular culture, with the latter earning Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards. Their next album, however, divided people, debuting a new dance rock approach with Reflektor (2013). Headed by a cryptic guerrilla marketing campaign in cities across the world, James Murphy of the treasured LCD Soundsystem as executive producer, the disco-infused singles - it was bound to be one of their best, right? Yet upon release, fans were either calling it one their best works yet, or a disjointed mess. People had expected one thing from the singles, and instead got too much more, with songs ranging from disco, to synthpop, to new wave, to dancehall, to dance-punk, to tributes to The Beatles and The Smiths.
Personally, I love Reflektor, even with its flaws. The key thing to understanding its expansive approach to the many different sub-genres that constitute dance music, rather than just sticking to disco and new wave, is to understand the album as a carnival. Win Butler spoke of how he exposed to so many different forms of music, such as Haitian rara, Jamaican dancehall, and Brazilian samba when visiting his wife (and fellow band-mate) Régine Chassagne's family's native home country, Haiti. This is reflected in the diverse array of dance genres that they play with, brought together with incredible production and lyrics that explore the intersections between love and technology. It was also partially inspired by the 1959 classic film, Black Orpheus, a Brazilian adaptation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. It stands as an incredibly overlooked album by many, but the underlying thing that makes it work so well, is, as is the case with all of Arcade Fire's past albums, unrelenting youthful passion.
Everything Now, however, is a monumental disappointment - uninspired, and ambitions that go wholly unrealised. The lead singles, were an unappetising listen, with the title track treating us to a stale ABBA impression. The production is too clean and very washed out; there's no quirk to it. 'Signs of Life' also share the same blandness that 'Everything Now' did; it is a funk jam that could be copy and pasted from a cheesy 70's cop thriller. Hearing lines that describe young and hip cityites as "cool kids / stuck in the past / apartments of cigarette ash", add to a mountain of boring clichés. While I appreciated the hip-shaking groove featuring the fleshy guitars on top of a fuzzed-out electronic beat in 'Creature Comforts', Win Butler's vocals are flatter than ever. He sounds dispassionate on this album, a stunning contrast to the iconic 'Wake Up' of 13 years past.
It isn't just the way the words fall from Butler's lips, the words themselves lack depth. 'Creature Comfort' puts on display condescendingly stereotypical depictions of young people who are depressed, self-loathing, and suicidal because of lust for fame and fortune. The tired allusions to the electrical appliance in the bathtub - in my opinion - negate the complexities or nuances surrounding heavy topics such as these. There has been a notable rise in young people expressing feelings of inadequacy in the past couple of years, whether that be through the rise in nihlistic humour on social media, or through more organised causes such as mental health awareness campaigns that would be no way near as widely circulated in the previous decade. Is it the hostile political environment that young people are set to inhabit that depresses them? Have young people always felt this way but only through the outward communication of social media that they are given a voice to express those grievances? These are intriguing questions, but Win Butler seems to only affirm their anxieties rather than interrogate or challenge them.
The quality of the singles matched most of the quality of the album tracks sadly mirrors the quality of the deep cuts. The first track beyond the singles, 'Peter Pan' is mastering mess set to vapid lyrics. It attempts an electro-dub fusion, a mix which has worked numerous times before; but they execute it in the most lumbersome possible way, with this muddily mixed, raspy bass line, backed with a screeching synthesizer melody. Not to forget the inexcusable hook "be my Wendy, I'll be your Peter Pan", a lyric that could have been written by factory-produced pop crooner Ed Sheeran. Subsequently, 'Chemistry' is akin to a reggae cover of a title theme to a bad 90's sitcom. The subject matter also is cringe-inducing, following a baby-faced sleazeball hopelessly trying to hit on a girl, failing to clock her evident unavailability.
The record doesn't pick itself back up beyond this point. Régine's voice rings in this irritatingly high pitch on the synthpop ballad 'Electric Blue', which is a shame considering she's capable of better. Nor with the two-part track 'Infinite Content' which aptly epitomises one of the main issues of Everything Now: its perfunctory approach to subjects that could that be explored more rigorously. This recurring flaw reasserts itself again, as the entire track, from the throbbing punk of the first part, to the twangy blues of the second, repeats "infinite content, infinite content / we're infinitely content" again, and again, and again. Alone, it's an intriguing statement that taps into the constant bombardment of 24-hour rolling media and further immersion into the LED screens. With devices such as VR, a future could be imminent that wouldn't be far off of Nozick's experience machine, but this haunting idea is not explored in any depth by simply reiterating one lyric, and squanders the potential it has.
'God God Damn' is sung from the position the girl in 'Creature Comfort' who was ready to "fill up the bathtub and put on our first record" (geddit?), reeling out her final hopes that there may be a higher entity ready to welcome her on the other side. For what should be a jarring song, is only given a low-key, generic Rick James bass line sprinkled with a few guitar licks hither and thither. It is somehow the most forgettable track on there, and it shouldn't be. 'Put Your Money On Me', another ABBA knock-off, which isn't bad, but not memorable either. To be fair, credit must to be given to the final track, 'We Don't Deserve Love'. It brings back some of that lost Arcade Fire vigour, beginning with this quiet, subtle, and distorted synth-lead, blossoming into a gorgeous choral refrain, a neat ending to say the least. Well, it's not technically the end, as the album seamlessly loops back on itself with a fuzzy transitional hip-hop beat in 'Everything Now (continued)', but I don't feel any desire to go in for seconds.
So it is not surprising to say that I felt that Everything Now was an chasmic drop in quality from all of their previous work. The bland production, the uninspired performances, the unexplored avenues, all culminated in a very sub-par project. While it intends to capture the mood of the young generation, those intentions are not realised through largely desultory songwriting. It's interesting to see whether they'll stick with their dance/pop phase, or move back to their home turf of indie, or move elsewhere. One can only hope they can recapture the passions of the past in the future, leaving behind the apathy of now.
Listen to Everything Now here:
Their rise in popularity and acclaim was so quick that within less than a year of them releasing, Funeral, they found themselves playing live alongside art rock legend David Bowie in New York, marrying both of their glamorous and artsy approaches to rock music. Their next two albums, Neon Bible (2007) and The Suburbs (2010), cemented this recognisable trademark of theirs, and their place in wider popular culture, with the latter earning Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards. Their next album, however, divided people, debuting a new dance rock approach with Reflektor (2013). Headed by a cryptic guerrilla marketing campaign in cities across the world, James Murphy of the treasured LCD Soundsystem as executive producer, the disco-infused singles - it was bound to be one of their best, right? Yet upon release, fans were either calling it one their best works yet, or a disjointed mess. People had expected one thing from the singles, and instead got too much more, with songs ranging from disco, to synthpop, to new wave, to dancehall, to dance-punk, to tributes to The Beatles and The Smiths.
Personally, I love Reflektor, even with its flaws. The key thing to understanding its expansive approach to the many different sub-genres that constitute dance music, rather than just sticking to disco and new wave, is to understand the album as a carnival. Win Butler spoke of how he exposed to so many different forms of music, such as Haitian rara, Jamaican dancehall, and Brazilian samba when visiting his wife (and fellow band-mate) Régine Chassagne's family's native home country, Haiti. This is reflected in the diverse array of dance genres that they play with, brought together with incredible production and lyrics that explore the intersections between love and technology. It was also partially inspired by the 1959 classic film, Black Orpheus, a Brazilian adaptation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice. It stands as an incredibly overlooked album by many, but the underlying thing that makes it work so well, is, as is the case with all of Arcade Fire's past albums, unrelenting youthful passion.
Everything Now, however, is a monumental disappointment - uninspired, and ambitions that go wholly unrealised. The lead singles, were an unappetising listen, with the title track treating us to a stale ABBA impression. The production is too clean and very washed out; there's no quirk to it. 'Signs of Life' also share the same blandness that 'Everything Now' did; it is a funk jam that could be copy and pasted from a cheesy 70's cop thriller. Hearing lines that describe young and hip cityites as "cool kids / stuck in the past / apartments of cigarette ash", add to a mountain of boring clichés. While I appreciated the hip-shaking groove featuring the fleshy guitars on top of a fuzzed-out electronic beat in 'Creature Comforts', Win Butler's vocals are flatter than ever. He sounds dispassionate on this album, a stunning contrast to the iconic 'Wake Up' of 13 years past.
It isn't just the way the words fall from Butler's lips, the words themselves lack depth. 'Creature Comfort' puts on display condescendingly stereotypical depictions of young people who are depressed, self-loathing, and suicidal because of lust for fame and fortune. The tired allusions to the electrical appliance in the bathtub - in my opinion - negate the complexities or nuances surrounding heavy topics such as these. There has been a notable rise in young people expressing feelings of inadequacy in the past couple of years, whether that be through the rise in nihlistic humour on social media, or through more organised causes such as mental health awareness campaigns that would be no way near as widely circulated in the previous decade. Is it the hostile political environment that young people are set to inhabit that depresses them? Have young people always felt this way but only through the outward communication of social media that they are given a voice to express those grievances? These are intriguing questions, but Win Butler seems to only affirm their anxieties rather than interrogate or challenge them.
The quality of the singles matched most of the quality of the album tracks sadly mirrors the quality of the deep cuts. The first track beyond the singles, 'Peter Pan' is mastering mess set to vapid lyrics. It attempts an electro-dub fusion, a mix which has worked numerous times before; but they execute it in the most lumbersome possible way, with this muddily mixed, raspy bass line, backed with a screeching synthesizer melody. Not to forget the inexcusable hook "be my Wendy, I'll be your Peter Pan", a lyric that could have been written by factory-produced pop crooner Ed Sheeran. Subsequently, 'Chemistry' is akin to a reggae cover of a title theme to a bad 90's sitcom. The subject matter also is cringe-inducing, following a baby-faced sleazeball hopelessly trying to hit on a girl, failing to clock her evident unavailability.
The record doesn't pick itself back up beyond this point. Régine's voice rings in this irritatingly high pitch on the synthpop ballad 'Electric Blue', which is a shame considering she's capable of better. Nor with the two-part track 'Infinite Content' which aptly epitomises one of the main issues of Everything Now: its perfunctory approach to subjects that could that be explored more rigorously. This recurring flaw reasserts itself again, as the entire track, from the throbbing punk of the first part, to the twangy blues of the second, repeats "infinite content, infinite content / we're infinitely content" again, and again, and again. Alone, it's an intriguing statement that taps into the constant bombardment of 24-hour rolling media and further immersion into the LED screens. With devices such as VR, a future could be imminent that wouldn't be far off of Nozick's experience machine, but this haunting idea is not explored in any depth by simply reiterating one lyric, and squanders the potential it has.
'God God Damn' is sung from the position the girl in 'Creature Comfort' who was ready to "fill up the bathtub and put on our first record" (geddit?), reeling out her final hopes that there may be a higher entity ready to welcome her on the other side. For what should be a jarring song, is only given a low-key, generic Rick James bass line sprinkled with a few guitar licks hither and thither. It is somehow the most forgettable track on there, and it shouldn't be. 'Put Your Money On Me', another ABBA knock-off, which isn't bad, but not memorable either. To be fair, credit must to be given to the final track, 'We Don't Deserve Love'. It brings back some of that lost Arcade Fire vigour, beginning with this quiet, subtle, and distorted synth-lead, blossoming into a gorgeous choral refrain, a neat ending to say the least. Well, it's not technically the end, as the album seamlessly loops back on itself with a fuzzy transitional hip-hop beat in 'Everything Now (continued)', but I don't feel any desire to go in for seconds.
So it is not surprising to say that I felt that Everything Now was an chasmic drop in quality from all of their previous work. The bland production, the uninspired performances, the unexplored avenues, all culminated in a very sub-par project. While it intends to capture the mood of the young generation, those intentions are not realised through largely desultory songwriting. It's interesting to see whether they'll stick with their dance/pop phase, or move back to their home turf of indie, or move elsewhere. One can only hope they can recapture the passions of the past in the future, leaving behind the apathy of now.
Listen to Everything Now here:
Listen to 'Wake Up' here: