Album #18 : Arcade Fire - Reflektor

Arcade Fire

Reflektor (2013)

I have never heard an Arcade Fire album in full until today. This is because every song I've heard from their previous three studio releases has been, to my ears, no more extraordinary or amazing than any other indie rock band of the last seven or eight years - not terrible, not OMG AMAZEBALLS, just solid (if somewhat pretentious) indie rock with insipid lyrics. 

Yet people go on about them like they're the second coming of The Beatles or something. Certainly music critics fall over themselves showering the band with praise, seemingly overlooking any sense of the band's bloated self-importance. (I know this, because I spent some time prior to listening to Reflektor reading reviews of the album.)

Reflektor was released late last year to wide critical acclaim. Consequently, I can think of no better way to enter the world of Arcade Fire than with what is apparently a "masterpiece" and a "new benchmark".

The Album

I seem to have a knack of picking albums that are essentially 'rock' albums but that are heavily synthesiser driven. Reflektor is no different. The influence of former LCD Soundsystem man James Murphy (who acts as co-producer) is all over this record, with a number of songs drenched in synthesiser, drum programming and electro-dance-pop beats. At times, this really works - Afterlife, for example, manages to be somewhat downbeat in tone yet it's enormously catchy electropop. Here Comes The Night Time also takes those dance beats, ties them to a heavy Haitian carnival music influence (albeit somewhat slower in tempo) and creates a song that is great fun to listen to, despite the sobering lyrics about the realities of Haitian life.

There are other highlights scattered throughout this otherwise bloated double-album, and they mostly involve the Haitian flavour that vocalist Win Butler picked up on a visit to the island nation. The title track features David Bowie. It is disco made modern, with congas providing extra bite to the percussion and making the track even dancier. It also features DAVID BOWIE. Flashbulb Eyes is the most upbeat, dancey track on the album and absolutely drenched with Haitian rhythms and percussion. Lyrically it's rubbish but the music is just so toe-tapping that, on this occasion, it doesn't matter. 

I'd also make special mention of You Already Know, which unashamedly steals elements of The Cure and The Smiths (in fact most 80s English New Wave bands) and manages to make them sound fresh again. Although, I do question the ego of sampling British TV presenter Jonathon Ross saying the name of your band - twice - on your own album. Cos, you know, halfway through the FIRST CD I was still wondering who I was listening to. Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice) is another highlight - close to my favourite song on the album - with its varied instrumentation (acoustic guitar strums swap with majestic, sweeping synthesiser chords) and its bright, beautiful sound. It's the sort of song that says, "yes, we are Arcade Fire, and we are truly capable of making wonderful music."

However, there are some things that are....well, either disappointing or just plain terrible about Reflektor. While lyrics aren't everything, they are very important to a song's overall artistic message, and the lyrics on Reflektor are woeful. Riddled with trite cliche and never really saying anything of value, they detract from the album. Then there are songs which are overblown, bloated wastes of time; tracks like Porno, We Exist and It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus) are either too long, too repetitive or - the worst crime of all - simply boring. The closing track, Supersymmetry, was described by Stereogum as being "beautiful" and featuring a five-minute ambient section at the end that is "greatly appreciated". With all due respect that's a complete load of toss, because this eleven minute dirge is neither of those things. It's the sort of thing that bands like Yes and Genesis were being lambasted for in the 1970s - pretentious musical wankery masquerading as some sort of artistic statement. Yet nowadays we're supposed to praise this shit? I look forward to Stereogum reviewing Yes's Tales from Topographic Oceans and giving it a 50 out of 10 if this sort of pointless time-wasting synthesiser/electronica wankbadgery is "beautiful" and "greatly appreciated".

What's worse is that you just know that the five minute ambient section is hotly debated amongst AF devotees. "OMG you know I think what it's saying is that it describes your descent into the underworld after you die at the hands of a rabid mutant hedgehog named Frank who speaks Hungarian with a Swedish accent". WAAAAANNNKKKK.

The Verdict

Nah, sorry, I'm not buying the hype, I'm afraid. This album - nay, the band itself - are not all that and a bag of potato chips. They're good, yes, on that you'll get no argument. But what I have learned about Arcade Fire from Reflektor, and coupled with what I've heard of their other material, is that we have a band being collectively blown by the music press for doing what hundreds of other bands have been doing for forty years....and doing it better than Arcade Fire.

Yes, there are moments on this album that had me saying, "YES. THIS IS GREAT MUSIC." I do think their high points are as good as most other bands out there today.

But I went in expecting to hear this mindblowing artistic brilliance and I didn't get it. I found a band that is, four albums into its career, seemingly unable to recognise musical excess. The key to composing really great long songs is to make the song seem like a musical journey, usually through several tempo shifts, key changes or different movements. Arcade Fire rarely show this, preferring to give us songs in excess of six minutes that are the same damn thing over and over and over again. It's no surprise that the times they do show this on Reflektor are some of the album's shining moments.

But perhaps I'm looking at this wrong. Perhaps the desire of music critics to heap questionable overpraise on Arcade Fire is symptomatic of something else. Maybe their unexpected (but frankly hilarious) Grammy win for The Suburbs has made the music press realise that Arcade Fire could be the 'saviours' of rock music, and, as such, wants to pump up their tyres as much as possible. Maybe these critics are just trying to appear 'edgy' and 'hip' by writing such glowing reviews of an album that most would probably be happy to bag the crap out of, if it were any other band, because of its bloated self-importance.

Or maybe they're seeing something that I just couldn't.

My rating: ***

Standout Tracks

Awful Noise (Oh Eurydice)

Here Comes The Night Time

Afterlife

Tomorrow's album sees me review another critically acclaimed and high-selling album; this one by a tragic figure whose talent will, sadly, never be fully realised.