TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Album Review: 'Everything Now' by Arcade Fire
Is “disappointment,” then, a fair assessment of their newest offering?
Change Size
‘Everything Now’ by Arcade Fire (Columbia/File)
H
aving a series of critically acclaimed albums in succession is a feat only a few artists have mustered. It also means the eventual release of an album that might be considered a “disappointment.”
Beginning with the release of 2004’s elegiac Funeral, Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire has put out a total of four universally adored records (2013’s Reflektor was perhaps a step down in terms of acclaim, but it still holds an 80/100 rating on Metacritic). Their new album Everything Now (Columbia) will likely be the first one their fans and the press might not fawn over.
Is “disappointment,” then, a fair assessment of their newest offering? Well, it moves with the confidence Arcade Fire is known for. Melodies perch themselves with instantaneous gratification, sounding familiar and new at the same time, but never not catchy.
Similarly, the overall sonic theme is a concoction of known genre tropes (in this case, the sparkly melancholic cheeriness of 1970s disco) and their overarching arena-indie delivery — itself a mix of various elements not alien to contemporary indie. This disco element also arose in Reflektor, and as such, there’s nothing particularly new served.
If there’s anything the album lacks, it’s the usual sense of celebratory “urgency” so often mentioned alongside the band’s name by indie aficionados, which has somehow been comfortably replaced with confident contentment.
In and of itself, the album is no real disappointment, although it is rightly not great. The context in which hardcore fans measure the band’s (for that matter, any artists) output will, for better or worse, present a spectrum of songs/albums being either “amazing” or “totally sucks.”
But Everything Now musically sustains almost everything likeable about the band. Whether that excludes sentiments regarding Arcade Fire’s suggested heart-on-fire oomph is impossible to qualify; what is clear is that the tracks are certainly no less catchy than, if not the band’s first two (or arguably, three) outputs, than at least it does so a la Reflektor.
It’s not solid from front to back, but aside from the debut, even fans will admit that each successive Arcade Fire release had a dullard tune or two — it just so happens that like in Reflektor, that track happens to be the title track (which even has two different, shorter, reprise-like intro and outro versions of it here).
And as with Reflektor, the majority of the songs here are built upon beats, with the band then seemingly layering their recognizable proclamatory rock on top.
For the most part, bandleader Win Butler helms his DJ/MC hat, utilizing chant-like melodies in a looped manner. This results in the aforementioned instantaneous quality, yet by the same token, it does not bode well for the longer songs.
The title track has Butler cruising well alongside the song’s ABBA-like flow (a piano line that does resemble that Swedish pop royalty’s hit “Dancing Queen,” if solely for its sound and hopping motive).
“Everything Now” would have made for a solid 2-3 minute hipster club track, but dragging along for 5, the song doesn’t have anywhere to go but ultra-resplendency. Essentially, the title is increasingly shouted in dramatic emotionality by the backing vocalists, with the voice of multi-instrumentalist/co-singer/Butler’s wife Régine Alexandra Chassagne becoming progressively prominent.
Similarly, “Signs of Life” does indie-disco in an even more retro fashion, practically sounding like a ‘70s homage, with the same homogeneous melodic line throughout.
Faring better are moments when the electro-touches turn inward and moodier. “Put Your Money On” is almost post-punk in a slithery, electro-punk/funk kind of way, while the thrash-pop-punk rush of “Infinite Content” is crunchy and simple in a fun way, lasting a mere perfect 1 minute 41 seconds.
“We Don’t Deserve Love,” meanwhile, is almost Vangelis in its electro melodrama, and while it’s a tad too lengthy at 6 minutes-plus, the song’s sleepiness conjures up plenty of subtle dynamics in between ambient synth flourishes and the celebratory/sorrowful refrain of its title.
Everything Now might be a challenge to dive into without the context of its creator’s praised repertoire. It is neither a knockout album nor a “sucky” one. What it is, is a solid electro-indie album with plenty of good songs and a few not-so-good ones.
Maybe on the next output, the band will go back to concocting another new aural adventure, but them resting on their laurels a little isn’t really that bad, either.
