Canada’s best arena band is doing its best to rebrand itself, but Arcade Fire’s idea of creative risk is just embracing everything you already think is cool.
Via grimygoods.com
Arcade Fire really want you to know that they've changed on their fourth album, Reflektor. They're more colorful, more groovy, more willing to laugh at themselves. They recorded the album with LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy as producer, and they debuted a big chunk of the material in a deeply strange half-hour special that aired on NBC following their appearance on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live. It's a whole new era for Win Butler and his small legion of musicians.
But not really. While it's true that Reflektor integrates elements of disco, reggae, calypso, and synth pop and is foregrounded by a busy sense of rhythm that has always been part of the band's sound, the actual songs feel like the same old Arcade Fire: dour, earnest, thudding, and dramatic. Everything on Reflektor sounds as though it was recorded live at a worn-down discotheque, and though the "nightlife" gloss is attractive, it's also superficial: There's just no getting around this band's unshakeable sense of self. There are solid, danceable beats on cuts like "Reflektor," "We Exist," and "It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus)," but it's hard to imagine anyone dancing to them outside the context of an Arcade Fire concert. The dynamic of the songs is heavily weighted in favor of arena rock theatricality, with the climaxes of key cuts like "Here Comes the Night Time" catering more to what would kill at a rock show rather than a dance club. Also, while they can write a good groove, the band is seemingly incapable of coming across as fun or sexy. They just can't help but be a big stack of wet blankets.
It's unfair to harp on what Arcade Fire are not, though. No one expects them to be fun, but they are expected to be exciting, emotional, and epic, and they remain the best arena rock band of their generation. The tension of Reflektor is in hearing the band grow restless with its sound while still being trapped in it even when try to step outside it. This has happened before with other arty arena rock bands: U2 embracing irony and dissonance on Achtung Baby, R.E.M. going baroque on Out of Time, Radiohead going out of their way to sound like anything but a guitar band on Kid A. Arcade Fire have the most in common with U2, and what they are attempting to do here is just like the sort of radical rebranding Bono and company pulled off in the early '90s.
Butler seems especially eager to come across like something more than an intense, extremely serious dude. He opens the straight-ahead rocker "Normal Person" by asking "Do you like rock and roll music? / because I don't know if I do…" in a mocking singsong, which is like if Bono opened "The Fly by singing, "I dunno if enjoy being earnest anymore." The irony is heavy-handed, but his angst is easy to get. Rock music, especially big anthemic rock music, is no one's idea of cool anymore, so he feels pressured to apologize in advance for what is certainly the best song on the album. This self-consciousness is very human, but also a little off-putting because insecurity isn't the greatest look for a rock star. It certainly sets them apart from their contemporaries in Coldplay, who don't seem remotely concerned with seeming smart or cool, and throw themselves wholeheartedly into making sparkling, uplifting anthems.
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