Review Summary: While they are at times handicapped by their grandiosity, 'Reflektor' sees Arcade Fire alter their sound, while losing none of their arena-filling appeal.
From the very beginning of Arcade Fire’s fourth full length LP, ‘Reflektor’, it is immediately clear that this is a vastly different sounding band than the one that recorded 2010’s ‘The Suburbs’, an album which subsequently won the Grammy award for best record. On the first track, which shares the name of the album, and also enjoys the bragging rights of lead single Win Butler and his band launch into a sort of ‘70’s disco groove which sounds much more akin to something Daft Punk would release rather than Arcade Fire. However, the song is a triumph both musically and in how it helps this Montreal band to shed their old skin of stadium-ready bombast and operatic antics for a more subtle, with Arcade Fire subtlety is an entirely relative concept, electronic approach.
‘Reflektor’ saw the band work with two producers, and it their influence is readily apparent. The band first began working on the album in 2011 before moving to Jamaica in 2012 to work with Markus Dravs. This Caribbean element is immediately present on ‘Reflektor’; ‘Flashbulb Eyes’ is probably as close the band will ever come to reggae, and it’s an enjoyable listen clocking at 2:42 meaning, unlike other tracks, it doesn't overstay it’s welcome, but more on that later. ‘Here Comes The Night Time’ continues in this sort of exotic vein, but has a sort of massive bass line which is reminiscent of the pioneering New York electronic group LCD Sound System. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that the band brought in James Murphy, the frontman for LCD Sound System, to take the helm of producer in August 2012. Murphy’s influence can be found on not only every track but also on almost every facet of the record. Just like on LCD albums, instruments fight and strain against each other for your attention, making for a sort of intensely dense listen, which I first found to be a daunting listen. However, Murphy also instils a sort of confidently cool swagger into many of the tracks on ‘Reflektor’. ‘Porno’ saunters along at a comfortable tempo, and has the slickness and sense of menace to it to would have seemed incomprehensible before Murphy came on board. The fact that the bridge apes the outro of LCD’s ‘Dance Yrself Clean’ only adds to the track rather than detracts. ‘Afterlife’ contains the sort of bombast and heart which channels the spirit of their earlier albums, and whilst you could certainly never mistake Win Butler’s lyrics with poetry that never stops him from singing them like he means every syllable.
Whilst ‘Reflektor’ is an excellent record, one which at times is outright exhilarating, it is also a bloated one, with most of the tracks clocking in at over six minutes, which means that even the album’s finest tracks can tend to overstay their welcome. Another flaw I found is that whilst it sounds like Arcade Fire collaborating with LCD Sound System throughout most of the album, it exists as its own entity entirely and can frustrate with how it can veer from one sound to the other at times, for example the transition between ‘Here Comes The Night Time’ an experimentally electronic track and ‘Normal Person’, easily the albums most outright ‘rock’ song is jarring at best.
In closing ‘Reflektor’ is a very good album and an exceptional musical experiment for Arcade Fire. However, the album falls victim to its own ambitions and, frankly, gluttonous run-time, such that sitting down to listen to the whole thing feels like a task. It lacks something, that I can’t quite put my finger on, that ensures that it never reaches perfection, even though it falls tantalisingly close to it.
