At this time of the year when people compile their lists of best albums of the year, Arcade Fire’s ‘Reflektor’ is on a great number of these lists. Is it really justified? It would probably on mine but I have to be honest, I am not sure I would have put it on any list if the same album had come from another band that I had never heard of.
But one thing is sure, Reflektor is not on Trent Reznor’s 2013 list! The NIN frontman praises David Bowie’s ‘The Next Day’ in a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, but he is not so nice with the Montreal band:
‘The marketing [of ‘The Next Day’] too, felt like a breath of fresh air. It wasn’t like the Arcade Fire album [Reflektor] and its yearlong rollout, where it was like, OK, I get it. You’ve got an album out, you’ve played every TV show in the world.’ Ouch! Do I decipher a bit of jealousy in this? Because obviously Bowie love them enough to participate in the title track song ‘Reflektor’! Didn’t he even threatened the band to steal the song if they would not hurry up to mix it?
Wayne Coyne, who has a long history with Arcade Fire, had recently another occasion to weigh on their last album during an interview with Rolling Stone:
‘I think Arcade Fire connecting up with James Murphy felt like two [artists] getting together and saying, “Let’s make something important.” I don’t really listen to the Arcade Fire on purpose. It’s just not my trip. I’m not really looking for that kind of, “We’re gonna survive” kind of music. But I think people were kind of into that.’
What did you expect? The Flaming Lips frontman has never said anything really positive about them or their frontman Win Butler,… and the Montreal band is hardly the artists he slammed the most in this same interview, just read what he says about Dylan and Lady Gaga,… nobody is spared by Wayne’s big mouth! At least, he is not a brown nose.
To the haters’ list, you could probably add Henry Rollins, who didn’t name Arcade Fire, but said to Rolling Stone: ‘That to me is like Rolling Stone music. It’s the shit that’s in your magazine. And it’s like, that world. . . I’m so glad that you all have found your people, but that world is so alienating to me. Anything that gets on the Grammys or the American Music Awards. … ‘ and since Arcade Fire is abundantly covered by the magazine and gets on the Grammys…
Of course, there was Noel Gallagher’s already quoted rant about ‘Reflektor’, but it was so funny i can’t resist:
‘I haven’t heard it. Anybody that comes back with a double album, to me, needs to pry themselves out of their own asshole. This is not the Seventies, okay? Go and ask Billy Corgan about a double album. Who has the fucking time, in 2013, to sit through 45 minutes of a single album? How arrogant are these people to think that you’ve got an hour and a half to listen to a fucking record?’
Ha! But there are the ones who loved Arcade Fire, like Spike Jonze. who made their videos, or Saint Vincent/Annie Clark who even wrote her own review of the album. I mean she totally loved it and this sounded so obscure and deep:
‘The Arcade Fire have released an album that elucidates our constant psychic vacillation between uber-connection and utter disconnection. They ask you to be aware of your fractured attention span/psyche/in touch with your humanity. Arcade Fire so mercifully avoid the Nuremberg-rock cliches (‘Hey!’) in favor of sleaze, anxiety, and pathos that you can dance to. Reflektor is an utterly 2013 record that asks the existential questions ‘Where are we now?’ and, more importantly, ‘Where are we going?’
In the words of Joe Strummer, “Straight to hell, boys.’
Sure but nerdy Annie Clark is David Byrne’s best friend, who has been a longtime fan of Arcade Fire and regularly crashes their shows, so this can’t be totally surprising! I don’t think Arcade Fire made the best album of the year, but they sure made the most dividing album of 2013.