Everything Now- Arcade Fire Review

If Arcade Fire had put out this album in the 1960s, they would've been thrown in jail. With its blatant anti-capitalist message, every single member of the band and their family would've been wiretapped.

But we live in much better times, so we can enjoy this album without worrying if Arcade Fire will get locked up even before they can start their tour. This album was proceeded with four singles, three stellar and one terrible. The lead single and title track of this album, Everything Now, became a pretty big hit, but not so much for the rest of them.

A few songs have multiple versions on this album. Everything_Now (continued), the first version of Everything Now, is merely a trippy intro, clearly meant to shock and luckily over in 45 seconds. The main version of Everything Now is the best song on the album, with its anthemic piano and acoustic guitar, stadium-ready chorus, and vocals that fit in with the song well but not too well to cancel out their powerful anti-capitalist message. The only bad parts are how the song drags on for half a minute longer than it should without enough of the piano, and the terrible pygmy flute intermissions. Signs of Life is repetitious because it's about how humans do the same thing over and over, but it gets a bit annoying eventually. It has a lot of good instrumentation, but it feels overdone, and too over the top. Creature Comfort, the second single for the album, has a massive electronic guitar that wouldn't seem out of place in Daft Punk's next album, and captures the mood of the unoriginal but pressing message of conforming to society's standards(and tends to drag on about it). Peter Pan is an unsteady tune in which lead singer Win Butler sings to his lover about what he wants for their future, with overdone instrumentation that make the song a genuinely enjoyable song.

Chemistry fully realizes the classical pop tendencies seen earlier in the album, but is a boring song that with its main singer- chorus back and forth belongs in a spy movie in which two agents meet in a club and complain about the quality of the music while exchanging top secret information and drinking martinis. Hopefully it'll fade into the background when Sean Connery and Daniel Craig really get to business. Infinite Content is split into two one and half minute songs, the first angry and distorted to a ear killing degree, and the second a remake of the first in a classical pop style that could send you into a stupor. Electric Blue has okay instrumentation, but it's sung exclusively by the annoying secondary singer for Arcade Fire, with boring lyrics about relationship troubles that have no merit except getting partially stuck in your head.

Good God Damn is very good, with Win Butler singing huskily in a way that flatters his voice, with the song bass driven with good guitar interjections. Put Your Money On Me is another bass based song, this a time long, danceable and electronic flecked track that seems to soar amidst its memorable vocal harmonies. The next song, We Don't Deserve Love, is also long at six and a half minutes boring minutes with nothing really interesting except weird theremin(you know, the untouchable B movie sci-fi soundtrack instrument) like sounds that fade in and out. Everything Now (continued), the closer, is an extended version of the intro, this time not trippy and with a hopeful instrumental end to the album.

This album is a pretty mixed bag. It gets really good with songs like Everything Now, Peter Pan and Good God Damn and their memorable slightly electronic instrumentation, but some song fall flat on their face. They tend to use too many instruments, not all good, and terrible styles, making Chemistry and Electric Blue the worst songs. one thing I like is how this album has a concept, with an anti-capitalist message and album art and paraphernalia suggesting that they were sponsored by companies with the same names as the album's songs. It would be interesting to see what their next album is like, with the multitude of directions they could take from this one. I'm not sure if they should or shouldn't make their way back from Everything Now, but they definitely should stray into the black again.
Wow, look how long that was- I set off to write a short review but it turned into my longest. Check this week for more reviews and possible top five/ten albums/songs of certain artists!