Arcade Fire - Everything Now
Five albums in, Canadian troubadours Arcade Fire really ought to be at the top of their game, and yet Everything Now is a record that suggests the very opposite.
Foreshadowed by an online marketing campaign that was initially fascinating before becoming downright irritating, the record’s early cuts are its highlights. The ABBA tinged title track heralds the same greatness as classics like Wake Up, while Signs of Life grooves with a hip-shaking vivacity. The real gem is Creature Comfort, a raw song that tackles self harm and the pressures on young people today; “Assisted suicide, she dreams about dying all the time / told me she came so close, filled up the bath tub and put on our first record”, laments frontman Win Butler, over chronically mesmerizing synthesisers. But the rest of the album falls flat. The repeated mantra of ‘infinite content’, set out to reflect on the post-consumerist web-centric world of today, is instead almost a parody of itself, too meta conceptually and equally lacklustre musically. The worst offender is Chemistry, an awkward ska-tinged number that Win and company would have been better sending to the recycle bin. With such a flawless back catalogue, it was inevitable that Arcade Fire would slip up eventually – here’s hoping round six is better.
4/10
