Arcade Fire's sixth studio album is a heavily mixed bag and despite its 40-minute runtime, it feels like an unfinished afterthought more so than a fully realized and finished product. WE is their weakest and most half-baked album, despite its initially hopeful ambitions from the album's lead single.
If you aren't familiar with Canada's finest and best stadium indie rock band, allow yourself to be introduced and obsessed. Arcade Fire are widely anthemic, grand, and full of many band members (often times to a jokingly absurd degree). They have only gotten bigger and grander with each release, starting out with the certified classic Funeral in 2004 to The Suburbs in 2010. After the outstanding The Suburbs and a surprise Grammy win for Album of the Year, the band reconvened with the group's most experimental and exciting record Reflektor in 2013. At the time, Reflektor was an ambitiously immense and huge record but in hindsight, it's much spottier and messier than I remembered (it's still solid, though!). The band's last record, the heavily divisive and panned Everything Now, prominently swerved the band into disco and electro-pop territory throughout its heavy commercial themes of capitalism and maximalism. My first few listens were pretty lukewarm, even towards disgust and laughable levels, but surprisingly Everything Now eventually grew on me and won me over. It is still by far the band's weakest and lamest album yet, but I still find it catchily enjoyable... so much so that I own it both on CD and vinyl (I don't know wether to be proud or embarrassed by that).
Cut to a long five years later, we finally have WE, the band's sixth studio album. Branded as the first of two new records coming out soon, the first single was hardcore predicting that WE would certainly be the classic Funeral and Neon Bible era return to form we've been desperately wanting for years now. "The Lightning I, II" kicks off with glorious and triumphant balladry in its first half, reassuring that we can make it. Then in its second half, we truly see where the band takes us. The buildup from part I explodes directly into part II, a fast paced, furious and fiery piano stomper that immediately harkens back to AF classics like "Keep the Car Running." It's a glorious, epic, and incredible two-part single that is not only their best song in years but reassures that there's still fire in the band's bellies after all these years.
If only... IF ONLY the band could continue this rush of youthful energy and excitement that they bottled up from this single. Instead, WE is a heavily mixed bag and despite its 40-minute runtime, it feels like an unfinished afterthought more so than a fully realized and finished product. Arcade Fire continues themes of dystopia, society's obsession and fixation on consumption of media, and peak capitalist devastation like they did on Everything Now, and they attempt more of a healing and hopeful take this time too. The album is split up mostly into two-part songs, where parts certainly differ... so much so that they may as well be individual songs themselves (excluding "The Lightning" of course). This gives off a clunky album experience for me. If we're counting the connected parts as one song each, there's technically only five songs on here. And when some parts are much more boring or uninteresting than others, which happens commonly on this record, then you get an annoying slog of a listen.
The lyrical themes, although interesting and appreciative, are approached in an exhausting, corny, and ultimately cringe fashion. There have been many lyrical blunders from Win Butler on recent material (Everything Now) and there are unfortunately a ton here. I get where Butler and the band's heart is at and I really appreciate the attempt but dang, many of these lyrics are a huge turnoff for me. Take this stanza off of "Age of Anxiety II," the second half of another two-parter:
Father in heaven's sleepy
Somebody, delete me
Hardy-har-har
Chinese throwin' star
Lamborghini Countach
Maserati sports car
I mean... do you see what I mean here? It's inexcusable. I'm sorry, but how can I take your themes of dystopian consumption seriously if you have lines like this? There are many other terribly out of touch and just plain ridiculous lines, like the repeated usage of "unsubscribe" on the part four of "End of the Empire" (I know, these 'parts' are really confusing, but just bare with me). They also have the audacity to have Win Butler singing "f*ck season five" in the same song in a serious and somber tone, and I just can't help but laugh. I just can't.
Let's just leave the lyrics alone for now and focus on the songs themselves. Overall, the instrumentals are solid and vary in acoustic piano rock to electro pop and disco. Yes, Arcade Fire are still riding disco, just not as much as on their last album. Like I said before, "The Lightning" parts I and II are awesomely triumphant. No complaints there. The opening "Age of Anxiety" is pretty and ethereal in its first part and rides into the electro pop, more so in part two, led by Regine's vocals. Although I do love the grooves in the second part, the song's six plus minute runtime is a bit too long winded and repetitive for its own good. Overall I enjoy this track, both parts, and it includes some of the album's best moments. All of the parts of "End of the Empire" contain classic piano and rock balladry, a la John Lennon. If you've heard some of the classic piano rock from the 70's, then you've heard this instrumentation before. Overall the performances are solid and the production sounds clean and clear. But dang, these two halves (or parts I-IV or whatever the heck you want to call it) tally up to roughly nine minutes total with little variation in its instrumentation. And if you account for the cringe "unsubscribe" type lyrics, it's a total slog to listen to, especially this being the centerpiece to this record.
"Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)" is a sweetly written ode to Win and Regine's son. It's cute and all and I appreciate their sentiment. But the song is terribly bland, overtly clean, and verging on squeaky commercial Lumineers "Ho Hey" styled folk pop. Gosh, especially with Butler's constant "do do do's..." It's atrocious. "Unconditional II (Race and Religion)" on the other hand is much better, focusing on an electro-pop tune with surprise vocals from Peter Gabriel. Even though it's not my favorite rendition of theirs in this style, it's still one of the better songs on the album. "WE" closes this album with an acoustic ballad it's pretty tasteful in comparison with the centerpiece "End of the Empire."
Ultimately, my response to WE is, "I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed." With the excitement and anticipation from "The Lightning I, II," the rest of the album seems to be a wholly missed opportunity. The overall instrumentals are fine for the most part but there seems to be a rough structure to these songs, making WE such a clunky listen for me. And as an album man like myself, I find this to be irritating. Much of the lyrics at times are exhaustingly rough and simply out of touch, despite the band having positive intentions of these themes. Many people seem to enjoy this record a lot more than me and I'm happy for them. For me though, this might be my biggest disappointment from Arcade Fire yet. And who knows, I felt pretty lukewarm about their last album and it grew on me. But these are my thoughts for now: WE is their weakest and most half-baked album, despite its initially hopeful ambitions from the album's lead single.
My Rating: 5 / 10
Favorite Songs: "The Lightning I, II," "Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)," Unconditional II (Race and Religion)"
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