Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The album cover image of Rodin's Orpheus & Eurydice signals the theme of Arcade Fire's longest and most involved album yet: this is a work all about loss and looking back, death and retrospection, memory and afterlife – big questions, tackled with suitable sonic majesty and, mercifully, the occasional sly grin.
The nature of heaven is a recurrent theme, right from the opening title-track. "If this is heaven, I don't know what it's for," sings Win Butler, "If I can't find you there, I don't care." The striding electro pulse swells ominously over seven minutes to a cacophonous conclusion, just the first of several moments when it feels as if you're being sucked into a black hole. "We Exist" is a rolling tsunami of sound with banked layers of keyboards; "Normal Person" is an electro-rock fuzz-guitar grunge barrage; and even the shortest track, "Flashbulb Eyes", manages to cram several kitchen-sinks' worth of harsh beats, zippy electronic noises and effects into a three-minute dub whirlpool. More extraordinary still is "Here Comes the Night Time", which speeds up and slows down before settling into a choppy groove with a subtle Caribbean flavour, then whips itself into another whirling vortex. "If there's no music in heaven," wonders Butler at one point, "then what's it for?"
"Joan of Arc" is a tribute to the Maid of Orleans in the style of a T. Rex glam-rock boogie swollen to outsize proportions, while "It's Never Over" pursues a wry rhetorical point – "when you get older, you will discover it's never over... it's over too soon" – over an itchy funk groove. A form of closure is reached on "Supersymmetry", a meditation on loss and memory whose percolating funk momentum recedes halfway through into fluttering drone textures, as if ghostly spirits were ascending. It's a brave and sometimes baffling album, broaching difficult themes; though faced with a series of such unforgiving electro-sonic maelstroms, one may hanker for the touches of folksy pastoralism that lightened earlier AF albums.
Download: It's Never Over; Reflektor; Here Comes the Night Time; After Life; Supersymmetry
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments