Arcade Fire - Reflektor Single Review & Analysis
rating: 5
It's getting cold. It's getting wet. In the words of Winterfell's House Stark - winter is coming. But it really ain't all that bad when you have a new Arcade Fire album on the way. Montreal's finest indie-rock outfit Arcade Fire are back, and they recently delivered the title track and lead single from their new album Reflektor a sprawling, swirling, gradually escalating disco-infused monster. None other than Mr David bloody Bowie contributes eerie-sounding backing vocals to the track, whilst ex-LCD Soundsystem maestro James Murphy helms production... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo The seven-minute epic continues themes explored on their 2010 masterpiece The Suburbs, an album loosely based around the idea of a search for the notion of home in ever-shrinking world. The track's central premise is that, in our GIF-saturated technology-driven times, art especially digital media is just a reflection... a pale echo of a purer sound. The message couldn't be more relevant in our age of retweets, instagram photo sharing, and viral media. 'Reflektor' reinforces preoccupations long on lead singer Win Butler's mind: on 2007's 'Black Mirror' he bemoaned the world's descent into an Orwellian surveillance-dominated society, whilst on 2010 tracks 'We Used To Wait' and 'Deep Blue' he wistfully lamented the way technology was gradually encroaching on all aspects of our lives. Butler urged his listeners to break free on the outro to 'Deep Blue': "Hey, put the cellphone down for a while in the night there is something wild..." Similar themes resonate heavily across Reflektor's soundscape - a savage indictment of the fickleness of relationships being sustained by social media ("We're still connected, but are we even friends?") and the need to break free from the banality of these watered-down versions of reality before they consume us ("I want to break free, but will they break me?") as reflections once consumed the doomed Narcissus. The stunning Anton Corbijn-directed video provides a harrowing visual representation of the band's lofty concerns. It's dense with imagery showing the blurring of boundaries between words, and mankind's poor attempts to mirror creation. In it, the band wear papier-mâché masks of their own faces, to convey that each day we wear a mask to represent one of the multitude of sloughed-off selves that reside within each of us. It's powerful. It's mesmerising. It's awesome. Arcade Fire aren't just out to provide the soundtrack to your year, they're trying to save your souls at the same time. Not for the first time, they look like the most important band in the world. Reflektor will be released on October 29. The band recently previewed new material from the album on the SNL feature 'Here Comes The Night Time,' directed by Roman Coppola. Check out the hilarious cameos including Bono and James Franco below... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fFAKrIntzY