Arcade Fire can be found in the dictionary as an example of »fuss«, cross-reference: bombast, kitsch, opulence. The Canadian somewhere-between-love-and-marriage-of-convenience duo of Will Butler and Régine Chassagne has been consistently inviting people to a service for indie peace for 20 years. In the meantime, the seventh mass has been read in the collective »we« form. And of course, once again they explain the world in the manner of a sensible self-help guide, propagating the dangers of YouTube, at the same time quoting from Dante’s »Inferno« and offering an M83 riff to gargle along to. This culminates in songs for which even the geriatric ward in Oppenheim would tip up for an afternoon of ecstasy. The ten songs swell up like your belly after downing four Jack Daniels with cola. They are also stomach-churningly necessary to calculate the cross sum of John Lennon’s solo material, Queen’s late phase and a Neil Young on working-class drugs. It may be that Arcade Fire are returning to their original »Funeral« – the tendency to sell old shit as new shit is sweeping like a hurricane across all festival grounds anyway – but for the pop hit on »The Lightning I, II« (numbered songs, cool!) alone, both kids belong in the gardening hell of Sunday morning TV.
Arcade Fire
Everything Now
Columbia