I have been listening to Arcade Fire’s ‘Reflektor’ a few more times and the verdict is still up. I feel a bit let down by the band, especially in the second part of the album, it’s certainly not love at the first sight. It’s disappointing because there was so much promise and hope before the release of this highly anticipated album that it certainly couldn’t catch up with this level of hype. I mean this review published in Rolling Stone a month before its release was totally out of hand, ‘Reflektor’ is an answer to ‘Exile on Main Street’? Closer to U2’s ‘Achtung Baby’ and Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’? What? In the same review there also was a mention of Springsteen, the Cure, Talking Heads, the Velvet Underground, Little Richard and Neil Young… I am not sure it helped, I understand the change of sound, the change of direction but all these references sounded ridiculous.
I haven’t written a review yet, there are so many out there, and most of them are positive, but I have been reading a bit more about the stories around the album itself. And what did I learn?
They really insist on these Haitian rhythms, they were essential in the making of the album, ‘We wouldn’t have been able to make this album without Haiti’ said Win Butler to the Huffington Post, although these drums may have sometimes been a bit lost in these complicated sonic layers that compose the tracks. ‘And rara music, which is kind of the street music — horns and African percussion, played super fast. We were exposed to these influences. Normally your influences are set when you’re 15; both of us were re-exposed to this deep influence later in life that was really transformative’, he said to the Montreal Gazette. They absolutely want to sell it as a Haiti-bound album, but is ‘Reflektor’ going to stay in history as the ‘Graceland’ album of Haiti? I can’t tell…
They returned to Montreal with close to 70 song sketches (wow 70!), and said hey have recorded ‘a ton of punk rock stuff that isn’t on the album’! And that’s simply too bad, I would have liked to hear more of this instead of the dragging-gloomy old-disco style of ‘Porno’ or the slow burn of ‘Supersymmetry’.
But the juiciest part was their first idea of James Murphy before working with him, and this is what Will Butler (Win’s brother) said to the Guardian: ‘I always imagined he and LCD would be kind of insufferable. And he actually said the same about us – that people were talking so much about Arcade Fire before he had heard or seen us that he was like: ‘Oh goddamnit … why are these stupid bands doing stuff with xylophone?’ And then he saw us and thought: ‘Wait, that’s Arcade Fire?’ And I did the same: ‘Wait, that’s the guy that I thought would be this hipster douchebag that I wanted to punch in the face and the balls at the same time? Great!’’ I can already see the jokes coming, except that technically it’s Will and not Win who said that.
I still like ‘Reflektor’, I think… It can’t certainly be compared to any of their previous albums, but it is a bitter ascertainment to admit that ‘Funerals’ was their first one and best of all.