Album Review: Arcade Fire- Reflektor
Say what you will about the Arcade Fire. Their earnestness
since day one has always been dividing. But you have to admire their 100%
dedication and commitment to an idea. I mean, just look at the long, ridiculously mysterious and complicated roll out for this record.
They were, you know, “big” right out of the gate. But it’s
interesting to watch their trajectory over the course of the last nine years as
they round the corner into their fourth LP—the double album Reflektor.
My earliest memory of the band involves sitting in the
library at Clarke College in Dubuque, reading through lines for The Laramie Project, listening to Funeral on my discman. My friend Colin
just wouldn’t stop raving about this band—I think at this point, I was like the
last person to hear of them, within their first little burst of post-Funeral fame. This was before I had my
ear as close to the ground as I do now.
This was long before Pitchfork was my homepage. And well
before I had transcended mainstream music into tape labels and all of the next
level shit that I listen to now.
Truth be told, at the time, I was most definitely not
feeling Funeral. Musically, I thought
it was great. But in 2004-5, I was not moved by Win Butler’s yelpy vocals. At
the time, to me, they were very reminiscent of Isaac Brock from Modest
Mouse.
And I really hate Modest Mouse.
So cut to 2007, and my wife and I watch Arcade Fire play two
songs on another somewhat mediocre episode of “Saturday Night Live,” and she’s
like “Whoa, this is really good.” And she goes out and gets a copy of Neon Bible the week it comes out. It’s a
record we listened to, like, A LOT, in the first part of 2007, and burned
ourselves out on it a quite a bit.
But cut to 2010, and the release of The Suburbs—a lengthy, self-aware, self-referential concept album
that eventually went on to win top prize at the 2011 Grammy Awards. The Suburbs worked, for me anyway,
because it was a combination of the band’s penchant for big ideas and themes,
paired up flawlessly with catchy pop song structures.
Reflektor is a
huge gamble for the Arcade Fire. Double albums are always risky, and the band
has traded in a lot of its ramshackle post-E-Street band shouting and acoustic
strum-alongs for something all together grander. The album’s lead single, “Reflektor,”
serves as a thesis statement for the 80+ minute journey ahead—with production
by LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy, “Reflektor” is a post-disco,
Haitian influenced dance party—the kind of dance party that the Arcade Fire are
capable of throwing, so there’s some #realtalk going on in the lyrics, but all
the David Bowie cameos, accessory percussion, and horn blasts are there to keep
you in the groove.
I really wasn’t sure what to expect from Reflektor prior to its arrival on the Internet
last week. The band played an abridged version of “Reflektor” on “Saturday
Night Live” earlier this fall—a hot mess of a performance that had my Facebook
feed blowing up with a lot of “Is this music?” and “What the fuck is this
shit?” from people not familiar with the band.
They also played the second single from the album, “Afterlife.”
Following the show ending at midnight, NBC aired a pre-taped special with the
band performing in a salsa club, filled with odd costume changes and out of
place celebrity appearances.
“Here Comes The Night Time” and “Normal Person” were two of
the songs included in the special. And
while I was like, “Hey these songs are okay, but wow this special is super
weird,” it’s comforting to hear those songs both filed in the context of the
album as a whole.
Split up into two distinct parts, Reflektor’s construction works pretty well. It’s not perfect, and
at times the balance between all of the styles crammed into the album makes for
a slightly uneven listen—this happens on the first LP more than on the second. The first seven songs make slightly more use
of the “world” influence that was so prevalent on “Reflektor.” For those that
were turned off by how drastically different that single was when compared with
their previous efforts, you can breathe a sigh of relief—there are still Suburbs-esq indie rock jams buried
within the second half of the record.
Oh man. Do you like
rock ‘n’ roll music? ‘Cuz I don’t know if I do…
Those are the opening lyrics to “Normal Person,” one of two
incredibly self-aware tracks on the album. It’s an interesting question to pose
halfway through the first LP of the album—specifically on an album like this,
which goes out of its way to be pegged by a single stylistic sound.
Reflektor can be a
little overwhelming at first—it’s a double LP, and quite a few of the song
lengths teeter into “self –indulgent” territory. The shortest song of the album
is actually the worst—“Flashbulb Eyes,” for some reason, is recalling that awful
song “Hey Baby” by No Doubt. The album’s
finest moments come on the second LP—the Bowie-esq glam of “Awful Sound,” the
chugging bass and 80s vibes of “It’s Never Over,” and the incredibly triumphant
“Afterlife”—the most “Arcade Fiery” song on the album.
Much has been made of James Murphy’s involvement behind the
boards on Reflektor. Something worth
noting is that he’s been attempting to produce an Arcade Fire record for nearly
six years now—but his LCD Soundsystem commitments kept him making it happen.
Murphy’s indie dance rock leanings are obviously all over this record, and one
has to wonder if it was just coincidental that an album like this is what the band wanted to make
this time around, and they were able to coordinate a schedule with Murphy as
producer; or, if either Neon Bible or
The Suburbs would have sounded
different had their collaboration occurred sooner.
The Arcade Fire have always made incredibly high concept
albums. Funeral was about death and
loss, Neon Bible was about religion, The Suburbs was about the struggles of
growing up and accepting adulthood; it’s a little more difficult to find the
connecting ideas on Reflektor. There
are moments where it’s an album about the Arcade Fire being one of the biggest
bands in the world—the faux live introduction to “Normal Person,” and the
actual live intro from a television appearance on “You Already Know” come back
to back, and there are some lyrics on “Reflektor” that can be perceived as
being incredibly personal—“We fell in
love, alone on the stage, in the reflective age,” then later, “We fell in love when I was 19, and I was
staring at a screen,” both seem to be about frontman Win Butler’s life and
relationship with band mate and wife Regine Chassagne.
The question of “do you like rock ‘n’ roll music?” is never
directly answered throughout the course of Reflektor.
It’s a challenging record, and it’s that fact that leads me to believe that Butler
doesn’t so much dislike rock ‘n’ roll
music, but that at this point in time, that’s not what the Arcade Fire is here
to do. By now, fans a band that grows leaps and bounds with each record
shouldn’t be surprised by how lofty this is, but early rumblings online have
been polarizing to say the least. Similarly to Yeezus, Reflektor isn’t
going to earn the band any new fans, and it may even alienate some of the more
casual listeners who enjoyed hearing “No Cars Go” on public radio.
The expression “the reflective age” is used more than once
throughout the course of Reflektor.
And by the time the synth noodling of the closing track, “Supersymmetry”
finishes up, you could look at the album as the sound of a band both reflecting
on the past while looking ahead well into the future.
Reflektor is available as a 2xLP or 2xCD, or as a digital download, on Tuesday, via Merge Records.
Reflektor is available as a 2xLP or 2xCD, or as a digital download, on Tuesday, via Merge Records.
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