Arcade Fire - The Sacred Fire of Anthem-Rock

By now it's almost pointless to keep repeating that it's impossible, these days, to have a completely original style without drawing in some way on references from the past. Still, it's always worth saying so when one of a band's merits is reckoned to be its personality, which, given what's been said above, comes not so much from the use of one's own ideas, but rather from the ability to rework and make interact elements already proposed by others, in order to create a style of one's own. As far as alternative rock as a whole is concerned, Canada's Arcade Fire have succeeded in this better than anyone else, for two reasons: first of all, from the moment they appeared on the scene, it was immediately clear that the influences of David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust", of the early U2, of dark and new wave were not merely pieces of a puzzle, but were used in such a way as to create something new; secondly, there's no doubt that from the very moment the band started achieving success, no other stylistic proposal has been more imitated than theirs. With so many young bands searching for their own magic formula: epic tension, dark anguish and adrenaline-fuelled energy, elaborate arrangements rooted in rock but with an orchestral touch, melodies that are neither too pop nor excessively elusive, and vocals delivered in a formally impeccable way yet carrying great emotional weight.

Given the versatility of their sound, it's easy to imagine how the band is actually a collective, with a few permanent members and others brought in as guests to enrich an already extremely rich range of solutions with their own contribution. The core was founded by the two voices, the male one of Win Butler and the female one of Régine Chassagne, in Montreal in 2003. The two would later become husband and wife, but in the meantime, together with other musicians, including Butler's brother, they self-produced a self-titled Ep in the same year the band was formed, which was later remastered and released in 2005, and one of the songs, "No Cars Go", would be re-recorded for inclusion on Neon Bible, their second album, released in 2007.

Eps that precede a band's major albums are usually listened to in hindsight, and it's easy to hear them described as a container for the elements that would go on to make the band's fortune, not yet expressed to their full potential. These seven songs are no exception to the rule: the vocals are already charged with emotion and see a predominant role played by the male voice, with the female voice nonetheless always stepping in at just the right moment to juxtapose her sweetness against her partner's robust timbre, creating not a contrast but distinctive, decisive harmonies that forge a unique collective chemistry; the melodies are already built on the balance mentioned above; the guitar riffs range between softness and angularity; the rhythm section's tempos avoid banality without ever sounding excessively daring; the keyboard and string parts thicken the sound tastefully, without the added heft ever feeling like an end in itself, and when light, darting piano runs arrive to bolster things further, the sonic dynamism increases, while always staying on the right track.

The songs can develop in a particularly linear way ("Old Flame", "The Woodland National Anthem"), or be built on a genuine multi-part structure (the aforementioned "No Cars Go", "My Heart Is An Apple"), or sit somewhere in between ("I'm Sleeping In A Submarine"), and each song nonetheless has its own sonic and compositional identity while still remaining consistent with all the others.

The potential, however, is not yet fully realized, because the sound and vocals are still a bit unripe: what's missing, in fact, is that plasticity and capacity for modulation that will later allow Arcade Fire to raise the emotional peaks they reach even higher. Still, with this handful of songs the group already shows itself to be well on its way, and anyone who listened to them back in 2003 shouldn't have been too surprised by what happened starting the following year.

In 2004 comes their first full-length effort, the now universally celebrated Funeral. Among the musicians involved is Owen Pallett, who no longer works with Arcade Fire today and who has since built a reputation of his own, first with his pet project Final Fantasy and then with the album that followed under his own name.

The record is a clear example of how, in rock as elsewhere, ideas are already in the air and it's simply a matter of who gets there first to grab them. Here we're talking above all about an attitude, that of the anthem pop song, which can draw on the most varied sonic suggestions as raw material. Surprising ideas and arrangements emerge from an almost Spectorian magma, and even if the aim often settles on a rather grandiose emotional effect, what comes through is a very soulful, classic sense of dedication and depth.

Fifteen musicians: voices, bass, guitars, dominant piano and drums, but also strings, accordions, xylophones and synths that are well present, dotting the melodies and piling up in the horror vacui of these ten crowded sonic rooms. With a title like Funeral, the quest for hymn-like intensity feels almost programmatic. Some members' family relatives died during the recording of the songs, between late 2003 and early 2004: the record is dedicated to them, with lyrics and music that touch exactly the chords of an evocative, desolate emotion, where the void of absence or loss is filled by the shared, choral nature of melancholy. A poetic choice that brings to mind "The Village", the M. Night Shyamalan film, where a deliberately created illusion shields the community from evil (but in reality only comforts it).

A few examples: "Une année sans lumiere" is a sly, sly-smiling ballad that at first sounds like the Tindersticks or Cousteau being covered by Jesus & Mary Chain post-"Psychocandy", with a repeated electric-guitar arpeggio, while Win Butler's voice recalls, albeit with a less epic, more frayed timbre, that of Ian McCulloch (Echo & The Bunnymen); in the coda it surges upward, the electricity rises, and it turns into pure U2, with The Edge letting himself be shredded to go out in glory.

"Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" is backed by a mournful accordion line, while voice, guitar, bass and drums play like PIL and shrill violins drive the chorus like a Nyman raised on no wave rather than contemporary minimalism; then, at times, they dissolve into a choir and a melody straight out of folk tradition by the light of a bonfire. "Neighborhood #1" opens the record, emerging with a Christmassy feel from a warm broth of sound that sets the scene for snowy neighborhoods, loved ones, affection and the pain that runs through the whole album. Gorgeous, as if "Last Christmas" (yes, that one!) had been written by New Order and handed over to the Tindersticks. More than songs, these are hybrid melodic hymns meant to warm hearts in winter — for anyone eager to discover new mutations of indie romanticism, tickling the seemingly unshakeable permanence of melancholy.

Funeral receives one of the most triumphant receptions of the past decade in the alternative world, both from critics and fans. Although, in truth, the year the Canadian collective truly exploded was 2005, when the record was also released in Europe and the band landed for its first live dates, Italy included (in late May, in Milan).

Success can exert a huge influence on artists. You have more responsibilities and more opportunities. It's possible you might stubbornly keep going your own way, but it's more likely that you'll start looking for new solutions, perhaps by looking around you. The fact is that Arcade Fire, unlike many of their contemporaries, took a good long break before putting out another record, riding the momentum they had built up.

They developed a new sound, worked the songs into shape, focusing on orchestration; finally they went off "somewhere by the ocean to record the vocals" — as Butler put it, explaining: "A lot of the songs on the new record make me think of being on the shoreline, near the water, at night."

Three years, taking a considerable risk of any fears about a dip in inspiration. That's how long it took to bring Neon Bible into the world, a title and cover as functional to the album's vision and lyrics as they are ugly.

The band managed to win over a large chunk of the public thanks to its two-faced nature, namely being at once indie (loser attitude, eccentric song structures, unconventional arrangements) and mainstream (the sheer epic quality radiating from every one of their songs, most evident in tracks like "Crown of Love"), while still leaning heavily toward the former.

Well, Neon Bible shifts that dividing line a notch further, without ever quite crossing it. In doing so it makes the following changes: a) a more full-bodied, physical, forceful, all-encompassing and rock sound rather than a danceably introverted one b) less elitist, more mass-oriented references c) more concrete, less imagistic lyrics. All while still remaining Arcade Fire, even if, obviously, no longer the Arcade Fire of Funeral.

The first single released, and fittingly also the record's opening track (a smart choice on both counts), the excellent "Black Mirror", sums up pretty much all the key traits of this new chapter. Ocean sounds running through the whole song, acidic garage guitar, orchestration pumping up its tone, flashes of epic melody surprising amid the repetition. Two other new elements then come to light. First, the vocals: Butler sings much better, while Chassagne scales back her part, limiting herself mostly to sudden backing-vocal arrangements with a very eighties flavor (assuming they are indeed hers) and faint accompaniments. A smart choice, since his clipped delivery suits songs like these better than her dreamier one. Second, the work on the strings, far more professional and precise (and here the hand is surely Chassagne's).

But what confirms that this is, once again, a work of quality well above the norm are the tracks that follow shortly after. The headlong "Keep The Car Running": loaded with strings, drums and handclaps, insistent piano notes, an airy melody and bass taking the lead. "Intervention": a long organ drone, acoustic guitars and bells, religion and war, fear and love, a dense melody, half-spoken, half-sung vocals. "Ocean of Noise": a Waitsian tremor of bass underpinning an aching ballad, chimes and strings stirring and accompanying the most beautiful melody the band has written so far. A sincere, deep embrace, with a surprise finale in a jubilant blast of horns.

These are three of the album's four masterpieces, and they show the band searching for — and finding — a path of its own, landing in a kind of modern new wave: more a second new wave than that Strokes-derived revival.

Where Funeral was more singular, but drawing from a precise inspiration, this second chapter is more conventional but broader in scope; and talk of "wave" here should be applied more to the method — an all-round recycling — than to the substance. One could even try to trace a lineage running from the Fiery Furnaces to Tv On The Radio (another reason for the playful nod to Bowie, a better critic than those who criticize him). These are semi-doctrinal speculations, admittedly, but they find their justification in the greater variety on display, sometimes quite openly, as "(Antichrist Television Blues)" shows: a long, breathtaking guitar ride, lifted almost wholesale from the Bruce Springsteen archive. On the opposite end, it's only "The Well And The Lighthouse" that fully gives itself over to the remake, with its Interpol-style guitar, vocal interplay and retro orchestration.

Then there's the rescue job on "No Cars Go". A great song even back then, the fourth masterpiece here: a mirror of how its writers and performers have changed and matured. Drum rolls and gusts of accordion, wave-inflected guitars, horns, rapid-fire "hey"s, synth crescendos: all elements already present before and now thoroughly revived (more power and depth; stripped of their amateurish edge).

In short, with Neon Bible Arcade Fire became more mature and self-aware, managing to produce a second record that, element for element, can hold its own against its cumbersome predecessor. Perhaps it loses the contest by a hair, but only because Funeral had a surplus of cohesion, an alchemy that's very hard to repeat, even for an album as solid and coherent as this one.

The record is once again a huge success everywhere, and as a result the venues on the supporting tour are very large: in Italy, for instance, the show takes place in a packed Piazza Castello in Ferrara.

Arcade Fire are by now proof of how a band can go from being an indie-microcosm phenomenon to playing huge stages and reaching a far wider audience. Often the real gauge, beyond sales (still decidedly significant for the Canadians), is the anticipation, the hype that builds around a single about to be released, rather than around a tour or, as in this case, an album on the verge of arriving. And for the third record, The Suburbs, that anticipation reaches feverish levels, probably also because the band once again lets three years pass between this album and the previous one. Proof of this is the compulsive buzzing of blogs and websites at the news of the album's leak.

It happens, though, that the gift once unwrapped isn't quite as shiny as the packaging and the wait for it would suggest. Let's be clear right away: it's not a bad record, but it blunts the impact of its hits (and there are several) on the rocks of excessive length and a certain overall disorientation. While both the debut and the sophomore album had a compact mood, The Suburbs unravels the tracks from a unified project, presenting them as single episodes disconnected from one another. Frontman Butler's strength, however, lies in his ability to write beautiful songs, taut and oblique, ready to change shape, to rise up like a wall, to break free. And here there's certainly no shortage of beautiful songs. The opening is dazzling, the initial one-two punch ("The Suburbs" and "Ready To Start") sends expectations into orbit, laying out the guidelines of the Arcade Fire sound: clipped guitars, immaculate vocals, choral crescendos for sunny days.

The dispensable, somewhat predictable march of "Modern Man" accompanies "Rococo", baroque even in its title. The fifth track, while not thrilling, offers a well-judged undulating motion that brings back memories of Funeral's choral splendor. Same credentials, with almost identical results, for the following "Empty Room", wrapped in guitars echoing shoegaze. The pairing of "Half Light I" and "Half Light II (No Celebration)" brings the Canadian combo back to the level they belong at: the first piece, in which a moving string symphony rises up crystal-clear and melancholic in its harrowing progress, warmly flares up and fades out. "Half Light II (No Celebration)" is its perfect electric mirror image. "Suburban War" and "Month Of May" offer nothing new — the former recycled, the latter an insipid little rock number (useful as a break from the grandiosity heard so far, but nothing more) — the dirge "Waster Hours" and the anesthetized guitars of "Deep Blue" fail to truly grab you, which "We Used To Wait" instead manages to do, a choral piece with an airy stride, in the wake of "No Cars Go". The last standout is the surprising synth-jappo meteor "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)", not far removed from the Eighties revival so fashionable these days.

The Suburbs is perhaps Arcade Fire's most studied album. There's restraint in everything, less gaudiness and a focus leaning markedly toward the pop format. The formula works perfectly in certain spots, yet in the long run it ends up growing tiresome. Highs and lows chase each other, the excessive runtime and some rather obvious missteps do the rest. Still, once again it's worth underlining the band's remarkable ability to write pop songs like few others can.

All things considered, this may well be the album that finally launched them into the pantheon, complete with a triple haul of a platinum record, a Grammy and Brit Awards (plus a slew of lesser prizes), though it's clear that the immediacy, vitality and innocence of the debut remain, to this day, unmatched.

But with tremendous nerve, Arcade Fire surprise everyone and drastically change course on the following Reflektor (2013). In cases like this, to avoid being undone by the fear of getting it wrong, rule number one is to exorcise it — or so the two of them must have told themselves — because otherwise there's no explaining the idea of placing ten minutes of backward-recorded drones in a hidden track inserted before the actual start of the album. Indeed, because Arcade Fire put on display sounds and rhythms that, until now, they had perhaps only hinted at, but certainly never fully explored. They'd already tipped us off first by choosing to pair the esteemed connoisseur of alternative dancefloors James Murphy with the Midas touch of Suburbs' Markus Dravs, but above all with the lively yet complex title-track single that preceded the album: rhythm is the new watchword, and everything else moves from there.

It seems it all began with a trip that Win and Régine took to Haiti, her homeland, and with its colorful street compositions made of maracas, bells and horns used in the manner of Afro-music. But those aren't the only influences at play: for one thing, the album was recorded, not by chance, in Jamaica, and for another, Win doesn't give up carrying along his oblique passions, which this time take the shape of the moralizing critic of manners Søren Kierkegaard with "The Present Age", and French film director Marcel Camus, with his modern-day retelling of the myth of Orpheus, set in Rio on the eve of Carnival, in "Black Orpheus". Travels, music, arthouse films, philosophical writings, assorted exoticism… but here's the answer: all of this can only point us toward those "centrifugal operations" that, in the past, elevated the insights of figures like David Bowie, Brian Eno and David Byrne.

The rules of engagement are quite clear: instruments in abundance, rhythm sections that are at times intricate, a significant use of electronics decisively altering the usual balance of a rock band, but above all meticulous studio craftsmanship, with the recording room used as an instrument in its own right, straight out of the imaginary handbook of the three artists mentioned above. Also ambitious is the length of the tracks, which in some cases run past five minutes, and in many cases even six, as if wanting to take all the time needed to develop the themes, in a construction that recalls — here even spread across two CDs — the feat with which David Bowie's "Station To Station" managed to floor even an old fox like Lester Bangs.

And, at the tail end of this autumn's super-single, over an afro-disco groove seasoned with sax and vocal duets that starts out innocent and thickens menacingly as it goes along, here materializes none other than the voice of the old Thin White Duke himself, with the dramatic pathos that only he possesses. Then comes "We Exist", and here the chef recommends stripping Boney M's "Daddy Cool" of all its joyful kitsch, slowing down — but not too much — the bpm of its bassline, and then serving it cold. The dub moment is immortalized by "Flashbulb Eyes", which is Jamaican, sure, but sterilized of folklore and energized by layers of electronics that distort the guitars and make the atmosphere, needless to say, subtly unsettling. A few openings are provided by the schizophrenic "Here Comes The Night Time", which pits two tempo changes against each other, the first breakneck, echoing traditional Haitian rara, the other, slowed down, winking at the Cure's "Close To Me". But the mood turns tense again in the synthetic rock of "Normal Person", just as much as in the following boogie "You Already Know". The first disc closes with "Joan Of Arc", or how to pack a killer riff worthy of an angry punkster into twenty seconds and then embroider an anthemic pop song on top of it.

On the second disc, the script changes in surprising fashion and the Canadian combo's new guise appears even more clearly. The moods become more contemplative and dense with electronics, first with an intimate version of "Here Comes The Night", then with the saga devoted to modern-day Eurydice and Orpheus (the gentle ballad "Awful Sound" and its taut answer "It's Never Over"), and then with the orthodox synth-pop of "Porno". Signs of versatility that spread out, shifting style without losing a shred of their shine, in "Afterlife", which harks straight back — with just as much inspiration — to the moods of "Funeral", in a New Order-like crescendo of the kind that sticks to your skin. The closing track is the dreamlike synthetic symphony "Supersymmetry", in which melodic flair weds the sumptuousness of its arrangements. Not quite a closing, though, because it's once again the turn of the mocking drone that welcomed us at the start.

Arcade Fire are back to being serious, and they don't mince words about it, with seventy minutes of top-tier music, a lit match between their fingers and the sly smile of those who, deep down, know they've hit the mark.

The cosmos of solo work has also proven surprisingly erudite. First of all there are the solo albums by arranger Owen Pallett, steeped in a remarkable symphonic spleen. Then there are the minimalist improvisations of saxophonist Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld's Bell Orchestre, leaning toward Penguin Cafe, and even a collaborative album between the two, Never Were The Way She Was (2015).

Last but not least, and arguably the most erudite of the bunch, Richard Reed Parry, already a member of Bell Orchestre, has experimented with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony alongside Nico Muhly, and even recorded an album for Deutsche Grammophon with the Kronos Quartet (Music For Heart And Breath, 2014).

Multi-instrumentalist William Butler, younger brother of frontman Win, made his debut with Policy (Merge, 2015), nothing more, nothing less than a breezy stroll through old and new new wave ("Take My Side", "Son Of God"), weightless in part thanks to its brief running time. 

On July 28, 2017, the fifth album Everything Now is released. The glut of content available online, which erodes our inclination to dig deeper, the frantic search for meaning in everyday life, the urge to have everything right now, with the consequent loss of any taste for waiting and for surprise: these are some of the themes tackled. That very taste for surprise which the band itself had drastically done away with, by releasing four new tracks in advance, staggering their rollout in the weeks leading up to the album's official release. Far less sprawling than Reflektor, from which it also stands apart through a wider array of sounds and influences that cross-pollinate the band's traditional sound, Everything Now confirms Arcade Fire's refusal to endlessly rewrite a Funeral or a The Suburbs, along with their willingness to look beyond, to rewrite a different album each time, giving it a strong identity centered on a core theme, both sonically and lyrically, fearlessly taking on – though perhaps they can afford to, at least a little – the risk of alienating many longtime fans.

Everything Now is without doubt the grooviest record Arcade Fire have made to date, and they don't shy away from that pop-dance drift, which today feels sharper not only compared to the uneven predecessor, but also compared to the results achieved by many contemporary bands (Tame Impala first and foremost come to mind) who have chosen to dive into electro beats. The Canadians' project remains a cut above, mostly thanks to a number of fine songs that leave intact their now-proverbial flair for grandeur – yes, because beyond everything else, tracks like "Good God Damn" or "Put Your Money On Me" are genuinely great songs, perfectly in tune with the band's new aesthetic, placed defiantly toward the back end of the tracklist, right when the vast majority of today's albums tend to drop off dramatically in quality.

The dub groove of the two "Everything Now" tracks bookending the album, locked in an endless interlocking game destined to close and start all over again, frames the record's overall mood, but the dancefloor approach is also confirmed on "Signs Of Life" and in Régine's falsetto disco turn on "Electric Blue". The array of producers enlisted helps the band seek out new musical directions, giving rise to the dub/rocksteady detours of "Peter Pan" and "Chemistry" (let's not forget that Régine has Caribbean roots and has always influenced Butler's songwriting in some way, and that Dennis Bovell and Linton Kwesi Johnson contributed to the remix of "Flashbulb Eyes"), the vividly colored hardcore-punk dreams of "Infinite Content" (in its second part, the one with the underscore, the song gets cleverly transformed into a country-folk ballad à-la Wilco!!!), and the disorienting "We Don't Deserve Love", which effectively closes out the record with Daniel Lanois contributing slide guitar.

But everything that seems joyfully pop is only so on the surface: the lyrics, besides dealing with love in the age of rampant consumerism, sift through fears and suicidal leanings, the latter theme tackled head-on in two tracks, "Creative Comfort" and "Good God Damn", both of which return to the same bathtub scene and a record playing in the background, the soundtrack to a tragedy unfolding within domestic walls. So the old trick resurfaces: wrapping heavy, serious themes in an (apparently) frivolous, carefree sheen. The maximalist approach remains intact: every available space is filled with sounds and instruments, with that tendency toward epic, stadium-rock baroqueness that has always been their trademark.

Then again, yes, we might all find ourselves agreeing that Everything Now is anything but essential, and some will even brand it the weakest entry in their discography. But even allowing for a few missteps, and even failing to match the memorable heights of their early years, with Everything Now Arcade Fire follow through on their effort to leap beyond the fence of an indie rock now drained of all meaning. Mimicry, cross-pollination and quality songwriting lead them to redefine its rules, stepping away from it just before its complete dissolution.

It was a Win Butler moved to tears, awash in a mix of joy and pain, that we saw interrupt the performance of "Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)" (the second, achingly sweet single pulled from this We) at Coachella 2022. Maybe it was the return to a big stage after so long, maybe it was the first live airing of a song written and sung to his son, maybe it was everything we'd all been through.

The first thing that strikes you about a record as programmatically moving as We isn't actually whether or not Arcade Fire have learned their lesson (the unfair hostility shown by critics and audiences toward Everything Now would suggest as much) and returned to the much-missed sound of their first three albums, but rather how deeply tied it is to these emotionally turbulent pandemic years. Years that could have brought us together but instead tore us apart, shattering our ideal of community even in the face of a dramatic global event. Years that Arcade Fire confront head-on and dissect across a concept album split into two sections, one titled "I", devoted to singularity and solitude, and one titled "We", which speaks of barriers to tear down, of union, communion, community. Joining Regine to celebrate the most intense ritual of this latter half, an enveloping synthetic choral piece titled "Unconditional II (Race And Religion)", is none other than Peter Gabriel.

But how does this 2.0 hymn to brotherhood actually sound? Have Arcade Fire really reversed course from the synthetic turn of Reflektor and the pop leanings of Everything Now, as the appetizers "The Lightning" and "Unconditional I (Lookout Kid)" seemed to suggest? Yes and no. The much-missed epic, choral indie-rock of Funeral certainly peeks through in those particular tracks, less so elsewhere, and sometimes not at all. The two "Age Of Anxiety" tracks are decidedly lively electropop numbers that borrow freely from the electronics of "The Suburbs" and from the New Order catalogue; toward the end of "The Lightning II" we even run into a glittering Americana coda, while the two restrained ballads of the "End Of The Empire" suite surprise with their intensity, understated arrangement elegance and an unexpected Lennon-esque touch. In short, this We contains a bit of everything, Arcade Fire in every guise we already knew and even in a few new transfigurations. What remains intact is the constructive spirit, the choral drive, the overwhelming sincerity, the hymn-like grandeur of the melodies. Those who will "settle" for all this, rather than hoping for an unlikely return to their origins, will find in We yet another excellent record from the Canadian outfit.

On May 9, 2025, Arcade Fire return to the scene with their seventh studio album: Pink Elephant. After the age of anxiety described on WE, perhaps for Arcade Fire the age of understatement has finally arrived, musically speaking. In the twenty-odd years since their sensational debut Funeral, the Canadian band had always – albeit in sometimes different shapes and ways – ridden that epic feeling that ran through their work almost as a natural, inborn trait. Pink Elephant isn't entirely free of that quality, but the key difference is that on the new album Butler and co. try to keep it in check, to "normalize" it, rather than ride it once again.

Granted, the orchestral staging of "Open Your Heart or Die Trying" would seem to immediately contradict all this, but in truth the album's trajectory heads in quite different directions. Both "Pink Elephant" and "Year of the Snake", the two singles that paved the way for the record's release and probably also represent its high points, unfold in a far more muted, sly manner than we were used to from this band, while still delivering two of the most successful and heartfelt choruses the Montreal outfit has ever put together.

Whether all this, lyrics included, is also connected to the band members' personal troubles, and in particular to what happened to Win Butler, accused in 2022 by several women of sexual abuse, is impossible to know. Among all the cryptic titles (and the surrounding statements), "Circle of Trust" inevitably stands out, a name also chosen for the band's official app, six minutes of four-on-the-floor beat that never build to a payoff, failing in fact on the very terrain that has always been Arcade Fire's forte: expressiveness.

The electric bacchanal of "Alien Nation", which at times recalls certain outings by Kasabian, is definitely preferable, but it's hard to imagine it ever making the cut on a hypothetical Arcade Fire best-of. The atmospheric "Ride or Die" is the most introspective and, in some ways, heartfelt moment, while "I Love Her Shadow" manages to succeed where "Circle of Trust" had just failed: straight lines, Eighties sonics and the sense of having rediscovered the band we knew. The unstoppable crescendo of "Stuck in my Head" seems to point directly back to Arcade Fire's early days, only to get lost in the obsessive repetition of its title, leaving the impression of something that, rather than exploding, remains unfinished. A sort of unwitting metaphor for "Pink Elephant" itself, a record that moves between well-worn tropes and a widespread, yet never quite overt, ambition to change. All things considered, if listening to it makes you feel a bit strange, that might actually be a good sign.

Contributions by Marco Bercella ("Reflektor"), Claudio Lancia ("Everything Now"), Michele Corrado ("We") and Fabio Guastalla ("Pink Elephant")

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