Arcade Fire; the holy grail of hipsters, two superb albums, one very good album, in their own words, have never had a hit single, but have enough critical acclaim, cult following and well deserved adulation, that they can pretty much do anything and the world will take notice. After The Suburbs and a three year wait; what did the band have in store for the adoring public?
Upon the album's release, the last thing on my mind (which normally rears it's ugly head with any double album) is whether the band could maintain interest and deliver an interesting package. Instead, I was still fascinated by the potential huge changes to their sound and atheistic.
Unfortunately for both; Reflektor doesn't deliver a show-stopping, head-turning and groundbreaking masterpiece that it could have been, but instead delivers something I didn't expect at all.
It's easily the most surprisingly self-indulgent album of the year.
Nine of the thirteen tracks (ten of the fourteen if you include the hidden pregap) go over the five minute mark and almighty Xenu, do any of them justify this? Some, but not many. The aforementioned Reflektor is every bit as wonderful as stated before.
Whilst it should have been the album's centre piece, it finds itself as the introduction, a highlight that sets the bar so high, it earns an altitude from the remainder of the album.
Following immediately is We Exist; in similar vein to The Suburbs but with Michael Jackson's Billie Jean for a beat, it's a potential three minute gem overstretched with a pointless minute long outro that serves as the real precursor to the album.
Current set-finisher Here Comes the Night is a slow, plodding beast that incorporates an obvious nod to Haitian carnivals in the same veil as Animal Collective's Centipede Hz.; a payoff that might sound great live but on record, is directionless noise that lacks bite.
Disc One closer Joan of Arc is also overstuffed with potential cuts to make a slightly above average track into something great. Whether it's the final bridge leading to the sinister synth fade out needing a trim or the final forty-five seconds of low level ambience which serves no purpose, it's again another track that, is a good song, buried under more seconds of sonic distortion.
Whilst Disc One has it's faults, Disc Two is a mess from beginning to end. Starting with Here Comes the Night II, a pointless reprise of the earlier, Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice) is a joke in on itself. Plodding notched to eleven giving the chorus all the more significance, it bares some resemblance to A Day in the Life but has more in common with Happiness is a Warm Gun; potentially three, maybe four songs spliced together but to less welcoming effect.
It's not all bad; Porno's a slow, thick and thankfully bleak synth pop number that, despite all the aforementioned faults with the album, is another highlight that somehow works. Afterlife, despite being yet another overlong track, would have been a suitable conclusion to the album, similar to We Used to Wait but more upbeat.
The actual conclusion; Supersymmetry is an eleven minute long trudge which gives up any momentum around the half way point for soundscapes and ambiance that go nowhere, lead nowhere and serve as a brutal reminder of the near seventy minutes before it.
Reflektor is monstrously slow, somehow over-produced, sonically everywhere with so much happening that it's a very difficult listen. It's the musical equivalent to George Lucas' Star Wars prequels; so much is happening that it's very difficult to pick individual moments from all the reverberation and layering. Also not helping the congealed nature of the record, songs that don't quite fit together but are bashed together like two ill-fitted jigsaw pieces, sure they're stuck now, but it doesn't look quite right.
Despite it's faults, it does have some good moments, sprinkled throughout helping you get through. Again, last time now; title track Reflektor is the stand-out track. Normal People is the stick in the Nu-Disco mud with a welcome hard rock age that makes the save from Here Comes the Night. You Already Know has Jonathan Ross' sampled as book-ends in what can only be described as the shorter cousin of The Suburbs and again, is a welcome return. Porno again, somehow works when the same formula that created it has failed before.
In fact, with a lot of trimming and dropping certain songs, there's a good album buried in Reflektor, one worthy of the same Arcade Fire with Wake Up, Black Mirror, We Used to Wait, all the Neighbourhood's in it's repertoire.
Although some, or heck, many may view the album as the decade's Kid A and upon reflection, maybe it will sink in, Reflektor is a overindulged, unabridged, or in layman's terms, fatty record that, although offers a significant change in sound, sacrifices pace ridiculous running times and meshes together too much for very little pay off.
5/10
H
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