Released on Oct. 29, Reflektor — the highly anticipated fourth album of Canadian-based alternative band Arcade Fire — seeks to redefine the boundaries of the group’s music.
Following a stunning Album of the Year Grammy win in 2011 for its third album The Suburbs, Arcade Fire began to work with co-producers Markus Dravs, who worked on the band’s previous two efforts, and James Murphy of LCD Soundsytem fame. A trip to Haiti, homeland of Régine Chassagne (band member and wife of frontman Win Butler), and 1959 film Black Orpheus served as great inspirations for the band’s new music, much of which was written and at least partially recorded in an abandoned castle in Jamaica.
No stranger to ambition, the now ten-piece band eventually molded its new sound into a jam-packed double album featuring two distinct sides of thirteen songs total, most of which hover at six minutes in length.
Reflektor’s album artwork showcases an Auguste Rodin sculpture of Classical Greek mythological figures Orpheus and Eurydice, both of whom appear as subjects of the album’s second-side highlights “Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)” and “It’s Never Over (Oh Orpheus).”
Despite success as profound as that which surrounded The Suburbs and the tour that followed its release, Arcade Fire is back and undeniably unswayed by the pressures associated with being projected to critical acclaim and commercial success.
Reflektor extends into new territory unexplored by the band’s previous three masterpieces. Although not an entire departure from the unique Arcade Fire sound this album is in no way a return to the quintessential indie rock of the band’s 2004 debut Funeral, instead seeing the band trade in the Springsteen-esque anthems of 2007’s Neon Bible for more dance-heavy, eclectic cuts that Talking Heads fans might be more accustomed to.
Setting the tone for the rest of the album, Reflektor aptly and abruptly opens with its title track, bongo-laden with an infectious beat escalated only by smooth sax, driving piano and background vocals lent by none other than the great David Bowie.
Songs like “Flashbulb Eyes”, rooted in deep reggaeton bass, percussion-heavy “Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)”, and tempo-flipping Carnival dance “Here Comes the Night Time” boast the band’s new Haitian influence and direction, while album standouts and likely singles “Afterlife” and “We Exist” embody a more careful step forward.
Moreover, the album comes across as increasingly iridescent with each listen, layered with a myriad instruments and number of intricacies. Reflektor culminates in a five-and-a-half-minute hidden track of reversed snippets of tracks that appear on the album.
Critics and fans appear to unanimously recognize Reflektor as a standout in the group’s discography. In his four-and-a-half-star review of the album, David Fricke of Rolling Stone labeled Reflektor as “the best album Arcade Fire have ever made” and compared it to “turning-point classics such as U2’s Achtung Baby and Radiohead’s Kid A.”
Arcade Fire is tentatively scheduled to embark on a soon-to-be-announced 2014 world tour. This past summer, the band managed to snag the number four spot on Rolling Stone’s list of the “50 Greatest Live Acts Right Now,” trailing legends Bruce Springsteen, Prince and the Rolling Stones while trumping others like Neil Young, Radiohead and Paul McCartney.
In its first days of official release alone, Reflektor skyrocketed in sales, dethroning the likes of One Direction, Katy Perry and Lorde and ascending to number one on the iTunes Album Charts in over 25 countries all over the world.
Reflektor is more than an album — it marks a triumph for Arcade Fire and solidifies the band as one of the most valuable and integral of our generation. Moreover, Reflektor largely succeeds in places where its predecessor — and Album of the Year — failed, accomplishing frontman Win Butler’s goal to ideally make listeners shake it but “with a little tear in your eye.”
Reflektor is available on Merge Records.
