Pop Culture Corner

The Disco-Ball Laden Return ofArcade Fire Artist: Arcade FireAlbum: ReflektorLabel: Merge “If there’s no music / up in heaven then what’s it for?” asks Win Butler halfway through the first disk of his band’s sprawling new album, Reflektor. The campaign leading up the album has been one of the craziest and convoluted any band has attempted in a while: a thirty-minute concert special following SNL, releasing a mute visual companion to the album a week before it comes out (set to the late 1960s Brazilian film Black Orpheus), and strange, Classically-inspired spraypainted symbols, anagrams of the album’s title. The bands seemed to know the magnitude of their change, and didn’t seem to care whether critics would be upset by it. The album, roughly 85 minutes long, carries over two very different disks, with nine out of thirteen tracks over the five minutes mark. Reflektor is indeed more dancier, with a strong Haitian influence in the writing and the LCD-Soundsystem influence in the production (dance prophet James Murphy worked on the album himself). But if you think about the lyrical theme of the past three albums, this one seems hazier. Funeral was about youth and “waking up,” Neon Bible was about faith and stories, and The Suburbs was about, well, the existential frustration of growing up in 1970s house with a picket fence.Reflektor shows flashes of previous albums: “Daddy is fine / I’m used to him now / But tell me why they treat me like this” on “We Exist,” channeling both Funeral and The Suburbs, “If you wanna be righteous / if you wanna be righteous get in line” on “Here Comes the Night Time,” reminiscent of Neon Bible. They are concept albums in that way, with clear intentions. Reflektor seems to cover a range of topics, many of them being bigger than the band has ever attempted: identity, duplicity, sin, and technology in a modern age, told through songs about Port-au-Prince at nighttime, Joan of Arc, and Orpheus and Eurydice.The album actually begins with a ten-minute hidden track (really hidden), actually “Track 0,” hidden in the pregap, on the album. In the way that U2’s Achtung Baby was made to be the “last record,” this album aims to be the “last CD,” with specific engineering tricks that are only available if you get the disk. The hidden track is remarkable: a series of tracks played backwards (Revolution 9-esque). It is, quite literally, a “reflection” of the first CD, each of the seven songs in reverse order, played backwards. The same thing happens at the end of the second disk, with the less-hidden “Supersymmetry,” which fades in after a short three-minute song to a storm of sound. These bookend the album, and give it a strong sense of what it is: imagine the cold terror of “Black Mirror” in Neon Bible, and multiply that by three.The first track is the hit single, “Reflektor,” and is by far the danciest track on the album, featuring everything from a killer sax line, barrelhouse piano chords, and David Bowie (again, singing backup...this is freaking David Bowie). The song grows on you: it unravels slowly, and seems to seep under your skin. “We Exist” is as Bowie-inspired as the album gets, and could easily be a lead single. “Flashbulb Eyes” is a perfect companion to the album standout, “Here Comes the Night Time.” The former sounds like the wanderings through a Haitian night carnival, while the latter alternates between fast, Vampire Weekend-esque beats, and a slow dance beat. This is as the musically exciting and adventurous as the band gets, which makes the latter half of the second disk a bit of a digression, but a comfort, for those who want the band to show some of its roots. The last three tracks on the disk are all anthems, pretty much. “Normal Person” is a bit heavy-handed, while “You Already Know” is going to be a hit (one listen and you sing it). Joan of Arc has cool interplay between Win and Regine, and gets us into the literary references that permeate the second disk. All in all, it’s an extremely tight first disk, full of high-energy, daring stuff.The second disk is a marvel that I am still peeling away at. It opens with solemn “Here Comes the Night Time II.” “I’ve hurt myself again / Alone with all my friends,” says Win. This sets the tone for darker, spacier second half of Reflektor, and serves as a great intro to the spectacular pairing of “Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)” and “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)”. The songs fit together like puzzle pieces, as intended: “Awful Sound” builds toward an Edward Sharpe-esque chorus while “It’s Never Over” has a throbbing dance beat under shouts of “Hey, Orpheus!” “Porno” is a hot track, opening with snaps, exhales, and piercing synth. Both the lyric content and music remind one of darker dance, starting with Depeche Mode and continued by LCD Soundsystem. Murphy’s influence is most apparent here, and the track is polarizing in pretty much every aspect, putting the band on a whole other plane. “Afterlife” sounds like how an Arcade Fire album should end: a true, honest triumphant AF anthem, which is then followed by the quiet benediction of “Supersymmetry.”“Afterlife,” says Win, “what an awful word.” In a song dreading endings, concerned about legacies and what comes after death, you realize the entire album is obsessed with life / death and mirror in between them. It could be a meditation on fame. They started at Exeter, played quiet clubs in Montreal, and now is selling out arenas worldwide. “Where do we go?” chant the band at the end of the album. That’s quite a good question. How does one follow up an album like this? That’s what we asked ourselves after The Suburbs, and probably will ask ourselves after the next album, and the one after that. Reflektor is indeed a reflection: one of music inspirations, one of life and purpose, and one of the band’s career, a sound that seems to have relaxed a bit from the angsty anthems of their debut. “Is this the afterlife?” Nah, you guys aren’t done yet. It’s never over.Grade: A~K