Arcade Fire
Merge Records
4/5 stars
Those familiar with Arcade Fire's apocalyptic visions of suburban collapse will find refreshment and perturbation in the latest record’s preoccupation with the elusiveness of love and redemption. Reviewers have called "Reflektor" everything from “The Arcade Fire’s ‘OK Computer’” to a “disco curveball." However, "Reflektor,'" though ambitious, is not as surprising as some have touted.
Arcade Fire has built a reputation around Win Butler’s philosophical pretentiousness. The frontman prides himself on the obscurity of his intentions. This means that the jumble of ideas issuing out of "Reflektor" is a predictable progression from "The Suburbs." Some tracks bear close resemblance to previous work by the band. 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' could just as easily have been featured on "Reflektor" and 'Normal Person' is like the warier older sibling to 'Black Mirror' on "Neon Bible."
At other times, songs on "Reflektor" emerge like musical epiphanies. It is this tangle of conflicting impressions that prevent the album from mounting the same heights as its predecessor. This mesh of old sound with new ideas makes the album an unsurprising sequel.
The title track, an experiment with an amalgamation of funk, glam rock and disco, sounds like something The Killers and Twin Shadow would collaborate on. Culminating in an exquisite brass solo that is accompanied by a David Bowie cameo, it is the kind of piece that is guaranteed to sell out arena tours.
Tracks 'We Exist' and 'Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)' are typical of the Arcade Fire oeuvre. There is evidence of the band's maturation in the more flavorful instrumentation. Later tracks abandon the agitated keyboard riffs of the band’s past in favor of hand drums, synthesizers and breathtaking brass segments.
'Flashbulb Eyes' is one song that the world is better off without. It is clumsy and inconsistent with the journey "Reflektor" aims to take the listener on. Sporting lines such as, “What if the camera really do take your soul,” it is a derivative jab at millennial self-absorption. However, the most insulting aspect of this track is that it ruins the stunning soundscape created by numbers such as 'You Already Know' and 'Here Comes the Night Time.'
The album's standout track, 'Afterlife,' is beautifully constructed. If you could conceive of a naked and aching lamentation set to synthesizers and a disco-hall drum beat, it wouldn’t touch this song. Don’t be fooled by its bouncy and effervescent instrumentation. The piece is a profoundly vulnerable elegy—an anthem for the lonely and the broken. It is a befitting end to an album about getting used to being lost.
In spite of the abundance of striking individual songs, "Reflektor" insists on being misunderstood, and that is because it is not just an album. It is an installation. The members of the Arcade Fire have never been interested in simply producing records. They are a band that sees their work as a continuous project with multiple installments. Each is carefully contextualized and curated. As listeners and fans, we have to take the entire project into consideration when we listen (or view) anything by the group. That said, "Reflektor" is baffling in its poor construction. On prior albums, the organization of the tracks lent itself to being listened to in one sitting—not so with "Reflektor." When listening to it, you can almost feel the band trying too hard to maintain their academic reputation; given Win Butler’s proclivities, though, that’s probably the point.
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