WE is a finely crafted album that shows off what has made Arcade Fire so celebrated, with a few stumbles.
I think it’s safe to say that Arcade Fire used up a fair amount of their fans’ good graces with their last album Everything Now. It had some decent songs, but elicited groans with its cringe-worthy viral marketing campaign, its heavy-handed lyrics about consumerism, and whatever the hell they were thinking with the track “Chemistry.” After releasing something generally thought of as a “misstep,” would Arcade Fire double down on Everything Now’s electronica, go back to their earlier, lauded orchestral sound, or try something completely new?
Arcade Fire’s newest album WE splits the difference between these first two options, combining synthpop energy and technology-skeptic lyrics with some of their classic indie rock and baroque pop sounds. Arcade Fire’s co-founders/lead singers/husband-wife duo Win Butler and Régine Chassange produced the album alongside Nigel Godrich, who produced almost all of Radiohead’s albums and several of Beck’s albums too. These credentials, plus the band’s own experiences as one of the most fêted indie rock acts of the 2000s, make WE a finely crafted album that shows off what has made Arcade Fire so celebrated, with a few stumbles.
While this would have sounded like heresy a decade ago, I’d argue that the electronic-based half of WE is the better half. “Age of Anxiety I” is a slow-building track that opens with piano, acoustic guitar, and pulsating synthesized bass, before finally adding a drum beat after a minute and a half. Then, just past halfway though, the song entirely shifts gears to become a more conventional-sounding dance track that edges on house music. It’s an excellent track, even if the lyrics are more or less a complete retread of the “loss of connection” themes that Everything Now and their 2013 album Reflektor touched on. I mean the line “it’s a maze of mirrors” could have been lifted right from Reflektor’s title track about “the reflective age.” That said, I think the claustrophobic tone of “Age of Anxiety I” with its punctuations of shallow gasps fits this theme quite well, and the line “gotta get the spirit outta me” offers some catharsis to the band’s usual gloomy outlook.
“Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” starts in a similarly minimalist manner, but quickly explodes into a New Order-sounding new wave track brimming with synthesizer and looped snares. It keeps your attention as its melody fades in and out, and Chassange’s singing over high-pitched notes that evoke Krafterwerk’s “Metropolis” makes for a great climax. Relatedly, Chassange takes lead vocals on “Unconditional II (Race and Religion),” cementing her association with synthpop tracks that started with “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” on The Suburbs. The song has a fairly 80s sound to it, which is only boosted by Peter Gabriel making a guest appearance to provide backup vocals. Both tracks are a little more abstract in the lyrics department, but have enough vigor for you not to notice. The quality of the electronic tracks on WE should dispel any lingering notions that Arcade Fire needed to wear waistcoats and play pipe organs to make good music.
The non-electronic tracks on WE are a bit more of a mixed bag. To start with the best, you have the two-part single “The Lightning I, II.” “The Lightning I” is a mild acoustic guitar and keyboard-led tune with an earnest refrain of “we can make it if you don’t quit on me, I won’t quit on you.” It’s fine and all, but “The Lightning II” completely blows it out of the water, and I’m glad it’s a separate track on the digital version for that reason. Anyone put off by Everything Now or even Reflektor should appreciate this track since it exemplifies the early Arcade Fire indie rock sound (particularly “Keep the Car Running” from Neon Bible). You might think a track that begins with handclaps and a count of “one, two, three, four!” is a little too on the nose for the band, but it’s hard to be cynical about such a great and vivacious track. It’s easily one of Arcade Fire’s best.
“End of the Empire” deserves its own paragraph for scope alone. The track is a whopping nine minutes on the non-separated physical editions of WE, and is the most grandiose thing Arcade Fire have done. This is really saying something, since “grandiose” has described Arcade Fire since their inception. The first “suite” of “End of the Empire” begins with a piano melody that sounds a whole lot like John Lennon’s “Imagine,” while Butler paints an apocalyptic picture and laments “spending half your life being sad.” The song gradually adds more and more strings until a full orchestra accompanies them by the third suite, and Butler sings with a somewhat David Bowie-esque cadence. These first three suites are very well done, if a little over the top, which is why it’s unfortunate the fourth suite is a buzzkill. It opens with the line “I unsubscribe,” which honestly made me think “oh no” as soon as I heard it. It’s lyrically downhill from there, as Butler rattles the same trite complaints about modern life you heard on Everything Now, including “dreams in your head the algorithm prescribed” and “heroes selling you underwear.” Admittedly, it is a bit funny when he says “fuck season five” out of nowhere (especially if it’s a subtle dig at Everything Now as their fifth album), but I’m glad this fourth suite is a separate track on digital versions, to keep it apart from its better predecessors.
The other non-electronic tracks are less enticing. One of the consequences of listening to bands who came of age in the 2000s is hearing sentimental songs about parenthood 20-odd years later, such as “Whatever, Wherever” from Band of Horses Why Are You OK or “Lace Your Shoes” from Modest Mouse’s The Golden Casket. “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid),” written for Butler and Chassange’s son, is easily the sappiest of these. Its message of unconditional love for their kid is sweet and all, but it’s not for everyone. It also devolves into a refrain of “do-do-do’s,” sounding like one of those indie bands that was big ten years ago but we all forgot about (maybe the Lumineers?). Finally, the title track “WE” closes the album on a subdued note, carried almost entirely by acoustic guitar and Butler’s voice with brief piano interludes. It stands alone as the sole track without multiple parts, and is overshadowed by everything that comes before it.
One of the great things about WE is that fans of Arcade Fire’s earlier work can hail it as a “return to form,” while newer fans could argue it’s just the band continuing their synthpop trend, and both would be correct. It has something to please everyone, and most importantly, doesn’t shortchange one style at the expense of another. This doesn’t mean that every song is a knockout, since Arcade Fire still throw in some clumsy lyrics on WE, and the band should probably steer clear from technology-centric social commentary for a while. Regardless, if you jumped off the Arcade Fire bandwagon in the 2010s, now would be a good time to jump back on.
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