Rock history is full of bands that had a commercial and artistic triumph and felt like they could whatever they wanted on their next album. Usually, this ends up becoming a double album. I bring the White Album and Tusk <\/i>as the first two exhibits.<\/p>\n
In that grand tradition, Arcade Fire follows up the successful The Suburbs <\/i>with the superb double disc Reflektor<\/i>. Classifying this is a chore because it draws equally on glam, alternative, prog, indie and arena rock, crossing the line into prog for several reasons: it\u2019s sort of a concept album based on the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus, the songs average about six minutes long, and it does not need to be as long as it is. <\/p>\n
The second disc is a little more experimental and more focused on the concept, while the first is simply a monolithic sprawl of a rock album. Oh, and David Bowie stops by for a cameo on the title track\u2026talk about high-wattage guest stars.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the rub: This is damn good music, an easy candidate for best album of the year, even though (not that this matters) it won\u2019t win any Grammys this time. The first two tracks are utterly wonderful, both with intense neo-disco beats and fantastic harmonies from Butler and wife Regina Chassagne. Bowie adds backup to \u201cReflektor\u201d about halfway through (he is a big fan of the band), while \u201cWe Exist\u201d is an empowerment anthem with a loping, slyly infectious bassline. The disc \u2013 especially those first two cuts \u2013 are inspired by Bowie\u2019s Berlin trilogy and U2\u2019s \u201890s Europop period, especially 1997\u2019s Pop.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cFlashbulb Eyes\u201d is a brief fuzzy rocker, \u201cNormal Person\u201d starts slow but turns into an upfront alt-rocker of the highest order and \u201cYou Already Know\u201d is jaunty and irresistible, forcing the listener to dance and completely sucking them in with that bassline. Even better is \u201cJoan Of Arc,\u201d which starts as a punk rocker but abruptly moves into a decadent glam-rock tune with \u2013 surprise! \u2013 another wonderful bass riff that anchors the song. This could be the only rock record of 2013 where we remember the bass riffs more than the guitars.<\/p>\n
The second disc stars with a druggy reprise of \u201cHere Comes The Night\u201d before moving into \u201cAwful Sound (Oh Eurydice)\u201d and \u201cIt\u2019s Never Over (Oh Orpheus),\u201d both of which plod along with half-assed dance beats and little in the way of musical resolution. \u201cPorno\u201d is only slightly better, but \u201cAfterlife\u201d is good in its recalling of the main beat to \u201cReflektor\u201d and Butler\u2019s best Bowie impression to date. \u201cSupersymmetry\u201d is the comedown after the party, the afterglow of the Greek love affair, with some lovely singing by Butler and Chassagne and a quietly insistent guitar line, but it is followed by a very long outro with some pointless noodling. The hidden track is simply 10 minutes of the album songs being played backward and offers absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n
So, as with all double albums, there is some definite editing that could have been done to fit this on a single disc, or at least some trimming to make it a lean, legendary album even if part of the appeal is the decadent sprawl and overly long songs. No matter. Reflektor <\/i>is Arcade Fire\u2019s best album to date and one of the best albums of the year. It also carries this branch of the band\u2019s sound to its logical conclusion, making it very unlikely their next album will be anything like this one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":31844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7667],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-43567","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-arcade-fire","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/43567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=43567"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=43567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}