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Arcade Fire Make a Cowardly Comeback
The healing cart has jumped ahead of the reckoning horse.
Their launches are typically loud and sometimes polarizing, clearing space for music that is endlessly if sometimes bristlingly exuberant: 2017’s Everything Now arrived amid a flurry of meta-commentary on negativity in social media, which Butler maintains is mischaracterized as snark; 2022’s bustling, hopeful WE enjoyed a battery of radio, podcast, and magazine chats. When Butler shouts into the maelstrom of “Alien Nation” that he returns to unnamed enemies (his most fervent objectors being people who have questioned his character) the “pain they would like to or could have caused” him “with love,” it feels like Elephant is tacitly saying, “We’re not going away and we’re moving on.” The focus on romance in the lyrics conjures a world where John Lennon drops Double Fantasy right after stepping out on Yoko Ono in the early ’70s. Working with Daniel Lanois, who ushered U2 and Peter Gabriel into their most danceable eras after early collaborations with Brian Eno, Arcade Fire forges a grittier and more claustrophobic sound than it did with WE, which tapped Radiohead regular Nigel Godrich to assist with labyrinthine, universalist two-parters.
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