![]() ![]() This is not a new trick, but, when it hits, boy, does it hit. The band is expert at building tension by creating a simple but potent melody-Chassagne is especially dexterous on a synthesizer-escalating the volume, tamping up the rhythm, and facilitating a sudden, noisy release. “WE,” which was produced by Butler, Chassagne, and Nigel Godrich, is less obvious and more compassionate, and makes better use of the band’s musical assets: Butler’s tender, reaching voice (he has become one of the great rock vocalists of his generation), the group’s love of Haitian rara (a heavily percussive, often mesmeric parade music), and its knack for writing rousing, propulsive anthems that make you feel as if you’re climbing a hill, throwing your fist in the air, and cartwheeling down the other side. (I thought of “Everything Now” when, at the start of the pandemic, the actor Gal Gadot released a bizarre montage of celebrities singing bits of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a video so unnecessary and ill-met that Slate later called it “one of the worst things to have ever happened.”) These days, nobody wants to be taught a lesson, especially by the rich and famous. The tepid critical reception of “Everything Now” presaged, in a way, a change in our collective tolerance for art that feels too expressly didactic. (Radiohead asked many of the same questions on “Kid A,” which was released in 2000.) Most people know instinctively that staring at Instagram for hours on end, dead-eyed and increasingly embittered, is less meaningful than spending time with family and friends. The band’s previous record, 2017’s “Everything Now,” was an indictment of digital culture and our hunger for “infinite content”-worthy adversaries, certainly, except that, by then, the toxicity of those forces already felt like old news. Yet, for a brief while, Arcade Fire-which was formed in Montreal, in 2001, and is fronted by the married duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, with Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara, and, until recently, Win’s brother, Will Butler-veered away from grandeur in favor of a more cerebral and lightly scolding approach. It’s tough to think of another band that’s as formally concerned with (or as preternaturally adept at) enabling full-body catharsis, and it’s tough to imagine another moment in which this sweaty, hyper-intimate brand of absolution might be more welcome. ![]() If you’ve ever driven a little too fast on the highway-all your earthly belongings wedged into the trunk, cheap sunglasses on, hair blowing everywhere, booking it from somewhere to somewhere else-you likely have a sense of the gasping exhilaration Arcade Fire specializes in. It’s evident within the opening minute of “The Lightning I, II,” a vigorous, urging single from Arcade Fire’s excellent sixth album, “WE,” that the band has returned-prodigally, ardently-to the hard-charging sound that once made its live shows resemble tent revivals. ![]()
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