In The Reflective Age- on "Reflektor," the Arcade Fire, and believing in the hype

Do you remember earlier this year, when the shadowy electronic duo Boards of Canada went above and beyond to market their new album Tomorrow’s Harvest?

Yeah you probably don’t. Boards of Canada aren’t exactly what I'd call a household name. Sure the Internet was shitting itself at the time—with each clue or crumb in the trail, Pitchfork was there, covering the whole thing until the release of the record in June.

And now I'm fairly confident no one gives a shit. And I'm fairly confident that once the album was released, an outfit like Boards of Canada was unable to capitalize on the buzz they thought they built up around themselves.

On the flipside of this is the release of Random Access Memories, the fourth proper studio album from Daft Punk. After taking out advertising during “Saturday Night Live,” and riding a lengthy victory lap with the single “Get Lucky,” I'd say Daft Punk were able to make a long gestating marketing campaign work in their favor. Over three months after the album originally was released, they are an act that is still talked about.

While both work in the field of “electronic” music, comparing the moody theatrics of Boards of Canada and the dancefloor jams of Daft Punk is like trying to compare apples to a fruit no one has ever heard of.

I guess the point I am getting at here is why, in 2013, is it the announcement of a new album by a “big” name has to turn into a media shit show?

The exceptions to this are David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine.

MBV released their third album, after 20+ years of waiting, completely unexpectedly, on a Saturday night—basically saying “here you go. Download it. Eat it up, fuckers.”

Bowie recorded an album in secret, nearly a decade after his last studio effort, and announced his return on his own birthday.

No mysterious commercials airing on television. No bizarre websites with things that could be clues. No listening events at abandoned amusement parks.

Jay Z’s incredibly disappointing Magna Carta Holy Grail was part of a $5 million dollar deal with Samsung phones—if you have a Samsung phone, you could download Jay Z’s shitty app and listen to his shitty album on July 4^th—and Jay Z pocketed the money from Samsung being dumb enough to buy one million “copies” of the album to offer to wireless customers.

Even Kanye’s magnum opus Yeezus— videos projected onto the side of buildings. No packaging. No singles. The “anti-marketing” that went into it was, in fact, marketing.

This brings us to the elaborate and confusing marketing campaign designed by the Arcade Fire’s fourth LP, Reflektor—due in stores at the end of October.

Whether they have meant to do this or not, the band is on a three year cycle—release an album, tour behind it, have it gain acclaim, and then quietly disappear before you suffer from overexposure. Their debut LP dropped in 2004, Neon Bible made them a household name in 2007, and The Suburbs earned them Grammy gold after it arrived in 2010. So here we are in 2013, and after recording with LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy, the band has a new album to reveal, and with that comes an incredibly hard to follow marketing concept.

It started with the band answering a fan’s tweet, inquiring about a new album—this is when the release date was revealed. Then a mysterious Instagram account showed up with images of street art spelling out the word “Reflektor,” then later, images telling that the band would be doing something on September 9^th at 9:00p.

That something turned out to be the physical release of the 12” single for “Reflektor,” a high concept and holographic package, with the band billed as “The Reflektors,” and a fake track list on the back, with song names pulled from lyrics.

Then there’s a bunch of other stuff too—like unconfirmed reports of the band playing new material at a salsa club in Montreal, and the “interactive” but super creepy video for “Reflektor” that you can view online.

The album itself arrives on October 29^th, and the only other official details so far are that it’s a double LP, David Bowie lends guest vocals (as heard in the background of the aforementioned single), and that a lot of the songs are really, really long.

And this finally brings us to the music itself. WHAT ABOUT THE SONG ITSELF? In situations where there is so much hype and frenzy built up around a band and an album, the music can very easily take a backseat—e.g. Boards of Canada. “Reflektor” is one of those really, really long songs—seven a half minutes, to be exact. But the more I listen to it, the more I realize it doesn't feel like it’s that long. It teeters into self-indulgence, but it moves so quickly that by the time you reach the end, you're left thinking, “oh wow, that was seven minutes already?”

In a typical Arcade Fire fashion, the opening lyric is about being “trapped in a prism,” a common theme throughout their entire canon—(e.g. “My Body is A Cage.”) This is also the first song on disc one of the album—presumably this leads us into deeper territory. Every Arcade Fire album has been tied together rather tightly by an underlying concept.

The music is, at first listen, incredibly uncharacteristic of the band. I dare use the word “fun” to describe the overall vibe and rhythm of the song—giving off strong disco leanings. This should not be a surprise though, as the band proved it could sound an awful lot like Cyndi Lauper on “Sprawl II, from The Suburbs. Given producer James Murphy’s background in the beloved LCD Soundsystem, it seems as though a majority of the album may stick to this kind of sound—or at least it should. Jumping back and forth between this and the brooding anthems from previous albums seems like it could create a disastrous listen.

The more I listen to and absorb all that is “Reflektor,” I realize how dense of a song it is. There’s a lot of ideas happening in the song. It’s incredibly daunting if you can remove yourself from the groove if lures you in with. And it’s a neat turn from the band—dressing up an elaborate high concept with bold enough funk trappings to distract some listeners.

While they have had their quiet and somber moments, overall, I'd say the Arcade Fire are a high energy band—channeling Springsteen at times with their bombast and grandeur. If they can sustain this energy over a seven minute pop song, can they sustain that same energy over an entire album based around a yet to be revealed concept?

But more importantly, in the weeks leading up to the release of the LP, can they sustain the hype? The band is set to be the musical guest on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live,” and there is a bevy of fans clamoring for new materials, so there is no doubt that this album is going to move “Iron Man numbers” the day it is released. But continuing to build on this momentum for another seven weeks or so just seems so draining to me. So I hope that the band has got a really good PR firm working for them.

“Reflektor,” while high on vitality, does seems an odd choice as a single—but then again, if this is as high concept as I’m expecting, how does one pick a single from something meant to be taken as a whole? The song, at times repetitive, seems to serve as a thesis statement, or at least a prologue to what will come after. Up until Monday, when this single was release, I had actually been ignoring much of the to-do surrounding this album. Not because I don't like the Arcade Fire. I do. And I would have listened to this record, hype or no hype. In a case like this, it just seemed like the marketing efforts were trying to be too clever and too smart, and were going to eclipse the actual product itself.