Arcade Fire has released another song off their upcoming album ‘Reflektor’, and it is even accompanied with a video. I feel sorry for the people who didn’t like the disco-dance direction the band seemed to have taken, because this song continues in the same path. Nevertheless, ‘Afterlife’ is no ‘Reflektor’, it’s less spectacular, it’s more gentle and less chaotic, but probably more emotional? There is no real surprise there, but the dancing beats certainly go on with a subjacent bombastic style that never totally explodes this time, while Win Butler’s clear vocals and Regine’s sweet backing voice bring a passionate and sensible component to the story… because story there is indeed.
The video doesn’t show any members of the band but instead footages from the classic movie ‘Orfeu Negro’ by Marcel Camus (the other French Camus guy!), which transposes the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in Brazil during the late 50s and which got the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film festival in 1959. The film had already some great soundtrack (Antonio Carlos Jobim) but this time it has Arcade Fire.
The choice of ‘Orfeu Negro’ marrying exotic location and greek mythology makes complete sense for several reasons:
– Orpheus and Eurydice seems to be the main theme of Arcade Fire’s upcoming album: there are songs entitled ‘Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)’ and ‘It’s never over (Oh Orpheus)’, and the artcover shows some Greek statues of the two mythic lovers.
– Furthermore, the band has admitted using even more Haitian influences this time, as this song ‘started with a Haitian percussion loop we recorded way back at the end of The Suburbs tour’. Orpheus and Eurydice, Orfeu Negro, Arcade Fire are trying very hard to associate themselves with true classics. It must be because they want to become one.
