Review Summary: WE don’t deserve love
Arcade Fire were the band of the 00's it seems like. From dethroning Lady Gaga to releasing an album as highly regarded as anything Radiohead has ever released. But in many ways I wonder if those moments were moments of musical genius or were they flukes and an instance of beginner's luck?
Maybe the lack of production really benefited the band in the beginning. Funeral was raw and visceral: the music covering up the imperfections in the vocals. It certainly feels different in hindsight. Regine did have moments of genius, but outside of those few instances in the first couple albums, she's kinda flopped as well. I'm just left to wonder what happened.
WE opens up with a promising start. "Age of Anxiety" is a decent track. It feels genuine. It's quite fragmented, but it finishes nicely, but Win is left whispering and Regine is so distorted it might as well not be her. "It's all about you / it's not about you" would be a cool motif of anxiety if it almost didn't feel forced. And Regine? It's as if she has lacked some sort of confidence she displayed in "Sprawl II" about a decade ago. She's nothing but a shell of her former self at best, and just as autotuned as others at the very worst. The second part of the song follows suit, but is even worse, sounding almost as if it was made for some MTV interlude commercial.
The following tracks sound nice, but it's like some weird mixture of M83's 2016 album
Junk with some Bowie knock-off intertwined in. It almost works, but it just feels awkward. I can't tell if it wants to be taken seriously or if it's just along with the satirical ride. I assume either case can work, but as a listener, it just makes me feel confused. I want to feel the sincerity, but I can't tell whether or not it's sincere or a parody.
"The Lightning" is definitely the centerpiece here and it works a lot better than "Everything Now" did in 2017, but that doesn't say a ton. It being fragmented into two separate tracks also works in its detriment since it can switch to a wholly different song as soon as it gets going. It would work much better as a full track. The first part can almost be tossed into the trash and the second part is good, but neither parts benefit being torn apart since there is no sort of substance between the two. There is a lot of repetition in both parts
There is one standout track, "Race and Religion". Regine takes a moment to actually sing, and it's a moment that I actually genuinely like. It's apocalyptic, but it feels rushed and phoned in to the point to where when I am finally digging it, it cuts right out. The closer here is one of the weakest tracks the band has ever written. If you ever want time to slow down to a
stop, just turn on the closing track. It feels 10 minutes long, despite being only 3-4 minutes long. Not to mention, nowhere in the track do they reach around to narrative. They just simply ask "wanna do it again?" and my quick answer is "no".
See, at one point in time, an Arcade Fire release was a cause for celebration. It was a moment everyone looked forward to. But this somehow slipped so under the radar to where I feel like I almost missed it, and I feel like many might have as well, and I honestly kinda wished I had. My first listen to this album left me with the overall impression that this was a step up from
Everything Now, but now as I'm listening yet again while typing this review, I've just come to the conclusion that it really is just
Everything Now with a fresh coat of paint and a little more substance. It's
better, but that doesn't say much. The overall takeaway is that the album is a cool experience for one listen, but there's no staying power, and I'm not sure they intended that? And if that's the case, then they've succeeded.
But I have to ask, were Arcade Fire genuinely a good band in the first place or are we plagued with rose-tinted lenses? I wanna say they were. "Neighborhood 1," "Crown of Love," "Seven Kettles," "Porno," "Afterlife," "Supersymmetry," those were all incredible songs, but you'd never expect the same band to have made those songs with this new iteration. I guess I'm becoming an elder millennial for holding a modern band to their standards whenever I grew up with them juxtaposed to how they are now, but I
know they were better, I
swear they were better at one point in time.
