Everything Now review

Everything Now is the much-anticipated 5th album from Arcade Fire, who are one of my favorite bands. As I've previously mentioned I have seen them live, but they didn't play any songs from this album or any new songs at all aside from 2 very brief covers of Nirvana and The Sex Pistols. With this album going even further away from their earlier stuff than Reflektor (Anyone else getting Kid A/Amneasic vibes?) and provoking polarized reactions across the internet, here are my thoughts.

Tracks:

1. Everything_Now (Continued): 6/10 a decent if overly short prequel to the album's main song.

2. Everything Now: 7/10 it'll take a few listens, but there's something here for sure. It's generic pop sound will put many off, but its sunny vibes, interesting lyrics and fun dance soundtrack will probably win you over.

3. Signs of Life: 4/10 what were they thinking?! Lyrics which feel like an inferior pop band trying to copy The Suburbs and a painfully generic instrumental make this one of the worst Arcade Fire songs ever.

4. Creature Comfort: 7/10 a solid single with an interesting electronic instrumental and some thought-provoking lyrics, but it unfortunately forgets to be enjoyable. Meanwhile, it's nice to see Regine Chassagne back doing more vocals having been neglected on Reflektor, but she screams her way through her lyrics like some animal throwing a tantrum.

5. Peter Pan: 6/10 in both its instrumental and lyrics, there are some good ideas yet in both its instrumental and its lyrics, it's too minimalist and repetitive to really make a dent.

6. Chemistry: 4/10 chemistry? What chemistry?

7. Infinite Content: 5/10 a fun rock instrumental saves this bizarre experiment from being a total disaster.

8. Infinite_Content (2): 5/10 the instrumental is nice, so it's not as awful as it could have been so easily.

9. Electric Blue: 6/10 definitely a better single. Some nice sounds in the instrumental and the powerfully melancholy tone manage to get past some overly high-pitched vocals and general pretentiousness.

10. Good God Damn: 6/10 this has powerful, meaningful lyrics. If it only it wasn't so dull on a musical level.

11. Put Your Money on Me: 8/10 with this moving and lovely (If slightly pretentious) song, the album finally gets back up onto the level of earlier Arcade Fire stuff.

12. We Don't Deserve Love: 8/10 a wonderful song which has the band back at their peak. Such a shame it's at the very end of the album.

13. Everything Now (Continued) (2): 6/10 yet another short thing linked to Everything Now. There isn't much to say. It's fine. It's just fine. It's got enough nice sounds to drown out the loud "Why?" presumably going through your head.  

Best song: We Don't Deserve Love
Worst song: Chemistry

Summary: This should go without saying: this album is a crushing disappointment. A lot of the hatred it's got all over the internet is well-deserved. Reflektor didn't seem so great at first but it was better the second time. This really wasn't. At least I saw it coming, as a string of increasingly mediocre singles were released prior to the album coming out. Basically, this has 2 decent lead singles, 2 very good songs at the end and everything else is average or worse. Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons. Arcade Fire's lyrics have been pretentious in the past, but at least there was something there. Here, there's really not very much in the songs at all except for repeated phrases. Meanwhile, the music is painfully repetitive and often dull, and the album is missing the sense of energy and humanity that defined the band's other albums. The middle section is particularly dire. All in all, this album, despite some good moments and nice notes, doesn't indicate a bright future for Arcade Fire. What a shame.




Final rating: 6/10