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.