2022 - Canada
Art Rock, Chamber Pop, Alternative Dance
I was 5 when Funeral came out, when “the day grow dim, I hear you sing a golden hymn”, 8 for Neon Bible, “standing on a stage of fear and self-doubt” and 11 when “you told me we’d never survive” in The Suburbs. Always a little too young, a little too young to understand their lyrics, feel the urge of living, too young for my body to shake at the sound of my tears, for my mind to break at the sight of my world. And then there was a shift from “I” to “We”. I was 14 when Reflektor was released, “praying we don’t exist”, falling “in love on a stage in the reflective age”, just before “when we met, you’d never expect this, and you say, maybe we don’t deserve love” on Everything Now. I was 18. Growing up with Arcade Fire is a chance I didn’t chose. My parents loved them, and I did too. So when WE was announced, an album with a tracklist taking the shape of a lifelong career summary, I was both apprehensive (as always with a band that has such an impact on your life) and excited to hear what this musical family had to say about them, about us.
40 minutes really is a short runtime for an album that massive. More than meshing together the sound and energy we could fin on Funeral, as well as Neon Bible, Reflektor and even something more modern, WE encapsulates everything the word means, from the connexions the band has with its audience, between them, or those between every human beings. Win Butler said in an interview that “WE is the word with the most meaning and with the least letters. It's a really big idea that's contained in a really small amount of space.” He took that idea from the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin and his book We released in the 1920s telling the story of a dystopian society that will later inspire Orwell’s 1984. That’s the other meaning of the title, something we can find in Everything Now, but also in The Suburbs and the song We Used to Wait, the idea of a struggle between society and individuals, in a period of time that saw a pandemic rise. With its beautiful artwork representing the black hole Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy as well as someone’s eye somewhere on Earth, Arcade Fire’s new project may be their most universal yet especial album.
“I am waiting / To get some intimations / Of immortality / By recollecting my early childhood / And I am waiting / For the green mornings to come again / Youth’s dumb green fields come back again” These lines are taken from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 1958 poem I am waiting where he writes about his hopes for America’s renaissance and the everlasting age of anxiety in which he feels trapped. This is the poem that influenced Win Butler and Régine Chassagne when they recorded the first half of the album. Age of Anxiety, starting as quiet and delicate as Arcade Fire has ever been, mimics an anxiety crisis with its rushing build-up leading to those heavy and jerky breathing incorporated into the song. If the alternative dance side of the album can feel surprising, Age of Anxiety, and more especially the second part, acts like a swelling spillage of raw emotions starting to draw the contours of this intriguing black hole.
Saying the movement in this album is from I to We is a misleading persepective. In reality, Arcade Fire build a stroyline where someone is trapped inside his own world, believing he can find the righteous path towards happiness by seeking for answers, to someone finding an unstable inner peace, but peace at least, in order to deliver its message on the second part with The Lightning, Unconditional and We. So when our fictional floydian character finds out nothing awaits him on the other side of the black hole, there’s finally more that meets the eye. This is the moment where Win’s voice is at its peak, where he faces his fears, his anxieties, his beating heart on the tip of his tongue. “I want to hear someone real. I want to hear your humanity. I want your soul and an artist laying it out there. Sometimes it’s rough around the edges… but at least it’s real. It’s alive.” And how alive Win is when he sings “I was trying to run away, but a voice told me to stay / And put the feeling in a song”. As always with Arcade Fire, “The beauty’s in the commitment.”
On the most beautiful song of the album, I am 5 again, but I’m also 8, 11, 18 and 23, I’m everything all at once. It’s this song where Arcade Fire develop their beautiful philosophy where you cannot look for happiness by denying your sadness. It’s Unconditional I (Lookout Kid). An address to his son, never naïve, always truthful. “Your job as a parent is to try to screw them up as little as you can, because you're not going to make them any smarter. They have a lot to teach us. I think it's important just to stay open and to listen to the kids. Because the kids, believe it or not, they know. They know what's up.” And when Win starts to lullaby us, it reminds me of a French song from my childhood I love with all my heart, Caravane by Raphaël. Simplicity, directness, emotionality, the words of a parent, the I and the We at the same place and at its most intimate. Even if WE’s imperfect structure and length can undermine the overall emotional reception of the album, I think this is the kind of music that requires us to grow, to spend time with it, expanding our life experiences, in order to feel it all. See you in a few years.
40 minutes really is a short runtime for an album that massive. More than meshing together the sound and energy we could fin on Funeral, as well as Neon Bible, Reflektor and even something more modern, WE encapsulates everything the word means, from the connexions the band has with its audience, between them, or those between every human beings. Win Butler said in an interview that “WE is the word with the most meaning and with the least letters. It's a really big idea that's contained in a really small amount of space.” He took that idea from the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin and his book We released in the 1920s telling the story of a dystopian society that will later inspire Orwell’s 1984. That’s the other meaning of the title, something we can find in Everything Now, but also in The Suburbs and the song We Used to Wait, the idea of a struggle between society and individuals, in a period of time that saw a pandemic rise. With its beautiful artwork representing the black hole Sagittarius A* at the centre of our galaxy as well as someone’s eye somewhere on Earth, Arcade Fire’s new project may be their most universal yet especial album.
“I am waiting / To get some intimations / Of immortality / By recollecting my early childhood / And I am waiting / For the green mornings to come again / Youth’s dumb green fields come back again” These lines are taken from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 1958 poem I am waiting where he writes about his hopes for America’s renaissance and the everlasting age of anxiety in which he feels trapped. This is the poem that influenced Win Butler and Régine Chassagne when they recorded the first half of the album. Age of Anxiety, starting as quiet and delicate as Arcade Fire has ever been, mimics an anxiety crisis with its rushing build-up leading to those heavy and jerky breathing incorporated into the song. If the alternative dance side of the album can feel surprising, Age of Anxiety, and more especially the second part, acts like a swelling spillage of raw emotions starting to draw the contours of this intriguing black hole.
Saying the movement in this album is from I to We is a misleading persepective. In reality, Arcade Fire build a stroyline where someone is trapped inside his own world, believing he can find the righteous path towards happiness by seeking for answers, to someone finding an unstable inner peace, but peace at least, in order to deliver its message on the second part with The Lightning, Unconditional and We. So when our fictional floydian character finds out nothing awaits him on the other side of the black hole, there’s finally more that meets the eye. This is the moment where Win’s voice is at its peak, where he faces his fears, his anxieties, his beating heart on the tip of his tongue. “I want to hear someone real. I want to hear your humanity. I want your soul and an artist laying it out there. Sometimes it’s rough around the edges… but at least it’s real. It’s alive.” And how alive Win is when he sings “I was trying to run away, but a voice told me to stay / And put the feeling in a song”. As always with Arcade Fire, “The beauty’s in the commitment.”
On the most beautiful song of the album, I am 5 again, but I’m also 8, 11, 18 and 23, I’m everything all at once. It’s this song where Arcade Fire develop their beautiful philosophy where you cannot look for happiness by denying your sadness. It’s Unconditional I (Lookout Kid). An address to his son, never naïve, always truthful. “Your job as a parent is to try to screw them up as little as you can, because you're not going to make them any smarter. They have a lot to teach us. I think it's important just to stay open and to listen to the kids. Because the kids, believe it or not, they know. They know what's up.” And when Win starts to lullaby us, it reminds me of a French song from my childhood I love with all my heart, Caravane by Raphaël. Simplicity, directness, emotionality, the words of a parent, the I and the We at the same place and at its most intimate. Even if WE’s imperfect structure and length can undermine the overall emotional reception of the album, I think this is the kind of music that requires us to grow, to spend time with it, expanding our life experiences, in order to feel it all. See you in a few years.