Arcade Fire - Everything Now (2017 album)

Who's more joyless than Pitchfork?

 

This is honestly the first Arcade Fire album I've ever really listened to and I like it. The only reason I gave it a chance was because I heard the title track on the radio and was surprised it was from this year and not the late 90's or early 00's.

I've been hearing about this band for ages though.

 

I care. And lots of other people it seems.

A song (to me) is not an instrumental. It has words and those are taken into account.
I'd go as far as saying that words are the most important thing in a good song.
Pop music is generally catchy music with superficial lyrics, and that's why I generally don't like that kind of mainstream pop: there's nothing, only a shiny surface.
That's what I appreciate in some kind of stripped down folk. If there's no message (for your target audience), you fail. There's no cheating with fancy production and catchy rhythm.

Now, one can choose to make a song without message or a to make a commercially cliché song but also to be more specific and directed with lyrics.
There'a a universe of possibilities: from existential poetry to nonsense, including social critique.
It's a choice. But if someone takes it, than I judge the lyrics for that. It wasn't necessary, but you did it: well, show me what you've got.

Pitckfork reviewer is right: this kind of songs walk on a fine line: too much attention on the commentary weakens the music's importance, too much attention in the music can result in a bland set of lyrics. It's a path that requires a lot of craft, if the goal is an enjoyable song and a meaningful commentary.

It seems to me (too) that social commentary here is taken for it's own sake, and its detrimental to the songs. And done in a slightly superficial manner, too.
It sounds kind of forced.

Plus, the reviewer points out that there's loss of melodic variety compared to previous albums (partially because of the singing style Butler pick up here) and that's true either: less melodic movement contributes to the overall sense of blandness. Again, it's a choice, and I value the results separately from the intentions.

 

Is it my cartridge dying but the Sterling cut is very bright and harsh on this one? Actually, most of the Sterling ones sound like this on my turntable.

 

Fair points.

And to be clear, while I am not a "good lyrics make or break a song or record" guy, I always love when a good song has great lyrics, too.

Arcade Fire, to me, has always been a band whose lyrics are solid to good. Never amazing, but almost never awful, so I am fine if the new ones are superficial or whatever.

Personally, I think too many professional critics get too hung up on lyrics and thinking they have to mean something all the time, and then using that as a basis to say "this is good" or "this is bad." It's why they often dog bands like Van Halen (whose lyrics are usually about women, partying, drinking, etc.), while always genuflecting to a guy like Bob Dylan, whose lyrics often have some type of social meaning, etc. Sometimes, music for the fun of it is just that: music for the fun of it, without any deeper meaning. And there is nothing wrong with that.

 

Fascinates me when music lovers turns against a band.
My personal feeling is that all the seeds of this album were already in Reflektor. Incorporating more and more electronic, pop and dance elements. Nodding to the 80s. And they are channeling their inner ABBA on a couple of tunes (the vocal harmonies, especially on Put Your Money On Me)
There was a certain dose of passion and youth angst in their previous work that is slowly disappearing. Is it this surprising? You cannot go back in time.

 

Really like this a lot. Definitely a lot different from their first couple, but I like it. I really didn't like Reflector, but I may have to go back and give it another spin.

 

Are you talking to me?

Sure, and nobody's young forever.
That is not justifying anything though. Maturity can mean the pinnacle for some artists or the decline for others. Only the output counts, in that regard.

As somebody pointed out, Sprawl II and it's (supposedly) unexpected success could have been the turning point.
Reflektor made this tendency a formula, and Everything Now is following.
But while Reflektor was still a step forward, many seem to feel that the new album is not really moving that much, more than repeating the formula.

Which brings me to:

I still believe that the U2 comparisons are flawed to begin with...
But in terms of future evolution, I have this idea. Sort of "whit great power comes great responsibility".
Once they were a rising indie band, and younger, they could afford more creative freedom.
If they have reached their commercial pinnacle now, and wider audience, it's also because of the dance twist and their music becoming more catchy and less edgy. Not that they were avant-garde, but still, I hope you know what I mean. Moving away from that direction would mean sacrifice the most superficial (and possibly recently acquired) audience in favour of the hard-core one.
I believe the band has still lots of original and creative shots in their guns.
But are they gonna be willing to use them and take the risk to go against the current? It's their job after all.

Of course, if a couple of albums in a row will bomb, they'll have to come up with something different, but that's another matter.

But another thought: realistically, how could have they come up with something rivaling Reflektor's complexities and ambitions?
Maybe a "relaxing" album is physiological. To make room and prepare for the next move.

 

Anybody quoting Stan Lee's original The Amazing Spiderman gets a like

But considering "The Sprawl 2" you guys make it sound like it was a bad thing song. I loved it when I first discovered it deep in "The Suburbs", I thought it was fantastic. Sometimes I think all the criticism
"Everything Now" is confronted with is really that old "Disco Sucks!" phenomenon.

Just finished another spin of it - with special attention to "Peter Pan" and "Chemistry" - and I really liked it. Somebody claimed "Peter Pan" was the "worst" thing they have recorded - thus far - and I totally don't get it. I mean... I can't argue with that Metacritic score but I really like "Everything Now". And wouldn't have thought anything bad about it. Until I read it. Maybe I'm having weird taste week. But since I'm still listening to music through my ears that's fine

 

Even if they misspell it?

 

I'm German so be my guest

 

Not my intention, it's my favourite song of theirs, as I said before.
It's just that it could have set a line between before and after.
It's the after I have some problems with. Once I "got" it, I liked Reflektor and I played it a lot (minus a couple of songs and the pointless hidden content) but somewhat it wore out quickly.
This one, I'm just getting warm for the title track at the moment.
But I know I'll keep listening. That's their trapping technique. And they're good at it

 

I'm enjoying side B a lot - it flows well.
I'm enjoying the album as a whole, with a bit of a disconnect mid side one, but all albums of theirs (to me) get bogged down a bit somewhere so I don't see that as a decline. Still a big fan of their music.

Regine's voice on the LP is nice compared to how the songs sound on my phone.

 

Maybe they genuflect to Dylan because when he writes a simple love song, it can be perfect - If Not For You, Make You Feel My Love. Or perhaps because when he wrote "Girl From the North Country", he was younger than Taylor Swift was when she wrote "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together".

 

I can't get "Put Your Money On Me" out of my head

 

I've had that for a week now. Seems we both have poor taste in music

 

While the music might or might not be comparable to Arcade Fire's, I think that U2 pretty much set the gold standard on how to create a career arc that allows you to have both critical and mass success concurrently, and one that Arcade Fire should have been looking to emulate. As you note, that's no easy task to accomplish - as music for the masses tends to be an earworm, and earworms don't tend to have enough depth to them to be of interest to people who listen to music with focus.

And yet...U2 were massively popular making critically acclaimed music for nearly 2 decades - even Pop was well-reviewed (if perhaps erroneously). I think it's interesting to note that Arcade Fire's first 3 albums seemed to be on a very similar arc to U2's in terms of popularity/commercial success.

Arcade Fire have tried to go the same route as U2 IMHO - after the Suburbs, they went with a surprising shift in producers (the LCD and Daft Punk guys), kind of like what U2 did for albums 4 and 5 (Eno and Lanois).

Have they succeeded? Definitely not on the level that U2 did - and definitely not with music that bears much comparison to U2's - but Everything Now is a great listen. I'm not even hearing the mid-first-side slide that people talk about, to me the album is excellent from beginning to end.

 

Excellent album, maybe not on a par with The Suburbs, but certainly better than Reflektor. Seems like they figured out to finesse that disco thumpa thumpa into their anthemic pop sound, and it works really well. Don't get the hate for this album at all.

 

No. I saw some arguments that were really over-the-top from my point-of-view, but not from you.
It is just that when a group lose the critical accolade, you'll have this sudden outburst of disdain that fascinates me.
I read somewhere in the thread that Win Butler cannot sing. And Bono neither. I mean, how much bad faith does it need to say that?
These guys can take a crowd of tens of thousands and make them sing along.
Anyway, this is just rock'n'roll.

 

Interesting points, but I have to ask: why should Arcade Fire have been trying to make music with the intention of achieving critical success?

 

Reflektor had some some great moments (particularly Afterlife) but it should have been a single disc IMO

 

I mean I brought up U2 but Arcade Fire's "career arc" - nice word btw, did you get it from The Financial Times? - has actually pretty little in common with U2's.

"Funeral" was a massive success and regarded as one of 2005s best/ most important albums. It immediately put Arcade Fire on the map in those post-Strokes days. It's still regarded as their best album by some people. "Boy"? "October"? How many people seriously believe that U2 peaked here?

The dance elements were there from the very beginning btw so "The Sprawl II" shouldn't really have surprised anyone who ever danced to "Rebellion (Lies)" in an indie disco.

So choosing the "LCD and Daft Punk guys" could only surprise people that actually know pretty little about that scene where styles and genres just were blended into each other. James Murphy was always an instrumental part of that.

In fact I think Arcade Fire's catalogue seems like a pretty organic, natural progression. Something The Strokes - as much as I love 'em - never were able - or willing - to achieve.

 

I think the new album is pretty good. It's not a masterpiece on the level of some of their previous ones, but you have a couple of instant AF classics (Creature Comfort, We Don't Deserve Love), several strong single-worthy cuts (title track, Put Your Money), and good to great album tracks (Signs of Live, Good God Damn). Even the lesser tracks are worthwhile (Peter Pan, Chemistry).

They shouldn't have included Infinite Content and Everything Now Continued, as those are slightly annoying parts that come at bad times on the record (beginning, end and right in the middle).

 

The only reason that Boy isn't a peak is that U2 kept "peaking" for a decade. Sure Funeral is Arcade Fire's best in my opinion, but it was hardly their most commercially successful. It established them in indie circles, but they weren't playing arenas until The Suburbs (occasionally) and Reflektor (consistently).

There's a reason I used the term "career arc". From the very beginning, Arcade Fire have paid just as much attention to the business side of things as their music, so it's fair to say that they likely studied the "career arc" of bands whose success they were trying to emulate to avoid being a 1-hit-wonder. Every album is accompanied by an all-encompassing marketing campaign ever since Neon Bible, the band has retained control over their music, etc. These guys came from McGill and Concordia universities and it seems to me that they brought some business students along with them to make sure that the business side of things is handled with aplomb.

While early Arcade Fire certainly included dance elements, it was the song that made you dance, not the electronic beats. You're dancing at the end of Wake Up because of how the song makes you feel, not because of a slick backing track. Sure LCD Soundsystem was happening at the same time in early-2000's indie-world, but so were the White Stripes. Neither band's music has any more in common with Arcade Fire's than U2's does. Arcade Fire was making orchestral rock with lots of instruments and vocalists, with a little edge to them...they had far more in common with the Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens than they did LCD or Daft Punk (these are all bands that I like, so no "bash" is intended here). Their music has absolutely changed over time, and it certainly sounds more Daft Punk than Polyphonic Spree today. Both are good...but nobody's doing what Arcade Fire were doing 15 years ago. Thankfully they still play those songs at the show, so they're still here.