And what if the album sucks? Well all this hype will have been for nothing, but right now, the hype is high and any detail about the upcoming Arcade Fire album, ‘Reflektor’, which is filtering through the info superhighway is the center of all attentions.
First of all, how did they get Bowie? We know he loves the band as he even played with them a at Fashion Rocks in 2005, but it’s a bit difficult to imagine the rock icon hanging out with the indie-turned-famous band from Montreal. But this is what is happening nevertheless, as Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry told NME:
“It was just after ‘The Next Day’ had come out. He basically just came by the studio in New York while we were mixing, just to have a listen to the stuff we were doing. He offered to lend us his services because he really liked the song. In fact, he basically threatened us – he was like, ‘If you don’t hurry up and mix this song, I might just steal it from you!’ So we thought, well why don’t we go one better, why don’t you sing on our version? Thankfully he obliged, and we were really happy about that.’… Really happy about that? I bet! Plus proclaiming Bowie wanted to steal your song is golden publicity!
What else is out there? We know the music is inspired by trips to Haiti and Jamaica and that the band wrote 50 or 60 songs for this album! According to some very well informed fans, the intro of ‘Reflektor’ even features a sample from the intro of ‘Tunnels’, which I couldn’t hear at all.
But on Saturday, the tracklist even surfaced, divulging some intriguing titles, and the shocking revelation that Arcade Fire has a song entitled ‘Porno’! Beside this, the tracklist has a few Greek mythology references, as the photo (and presumably the cover) suggested it, such as Orpheus and Erydice, and now it sounds like a Nick Cave album! But seriously, this echoes Reflektor’s line ‘between the realms of the dead and the living’ sung in French by Regine… their songs have always revolved around these themes about darkness/light (‘I went out into the night/I went out to find some light’), seeing love/being blinded by love (‘I carved your name across my eyelids/You pray for rain I pray for blindness’ or ‘But my heart keeps watching through the skin of my eyelids’), mirror/reflecting screens (‘No moon, no pale reflection/Black mirror, black mirror’), going to dark places before reaching love (‘a tunnel from my window to yours’, and now Opheus in the underworld looking for Erydice?). So with titles like ‘Flashbulb Eyes’ or ‘Here Comes the Night Time’ I fell right at home. Here is tracklist (with two discs?) and it will not suck!
‘Reflektor’ tracklist:
Disc
01. Reflektor
02. We Exist
03. Flashbulb Eyes
04. Here Comes the Night Time
05. Normal Person
06. You Already Know
07. Joan of Arc
Disc 2
01. Here Comes the Night Time II
02. Awful Sound (Oh Erydice)
03. It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus)
04. Porno
05. Afterlife
06. Supersymmetry