WE

Rebooting the euphoria of their 2004 debut, Funeral, WE is a big old blast of an album. One destined to lift the spirit, inflate the soul and get fans dancing giddily through the carnage of 2022.

Superb ... The emphasis this time around is not on bells and whistles or external bombast but simply on the music itself.

It’s clear that these songs have a real and sincere heart, designed to both stir and soothe the soul in one fell swoop.

An ouroboros-like reawakening that finds them at their acerbic and celebratory best.

It’s their best album since The Suburbs.

A welcome return to form.

Philosophically, they haven’t been so focussed since 2010’s ‘The Suburbs’, nor so musically dramatic since 2007’s ‘Neon Bible’. Subscribe.

[WE] is more thoughtful and concise about the proverbial end of the world. And as with all Arcade Fire albums, it’s an urgent, earnest piece of work — no less vital than their worshiped LPs Funeral (2004) or The Suburbs (2010).

WE is Arcade fire's best album since 2010's The Suburbs. By circling back, they've once again moving forward. [Jun 2022, p.86]

Arcade Fire have delivered a triumphant restatement of purpose that 2022 probably doesn’t deserve but is brightened by all the same.[Jun 2022, p.35]

It’s an album that crystallises just what makes Arcade Fire so great, and when they hit the mark, as they do several times on this record, there’s nobody to touch them. It’s good to have them back on form.

It’s the sound of a band digging deep, sharing the lessons they’ve learned, and channeling their experiences into something bigger than all its members combined. Even if it’s slightly lopsided and occasionally heavy-handed, this album undoubtedly proves that Arcade Fire have a lot of gas in the tank, and they’ll do whatever it takes to… (I’m sorry) keep the car running.

There’s plenty to recommend this latest offering. Bound together with a rather intoxicating blend of intimacy, inconsistency, and immediacy, this is the sound of a band coming home.

While not as immediately accessible as the all-star run of their first three albums, WE will at least be a course-corrector for fans still alienated by Everything Now and the underrated Reflektor, a satisfying journey that realigns the band's heart and soul.

The melodies and arrangements here are as excellent as they are predictable, and the band recaptures their classic sound on “The Lightning I, II,” with a comfortingly familiar blend of wide-open-skies Springsteen/U2 bombast and pour-out-your-heart emotionalism. But at times, especially toward the beginning of the album, WE takes a more tentative approach.

To their credit, they mostly remember in the second half of the record, where the songs become more modest and refined, the writing more confident and precise.

Nothing here quite scratches the itch of both emotional catharsis and rapturous splendour the way Arcade Fire's best songs do, but after a few initial attempts at capturing our collective panic and frustration, they have finally managed to pull it off by seeing themselves as part of the problem, by putting themselves in the line of fire, and by sharing the coping strategies and counterarguments that get them through and putting them into song.

It’s retreading old ground and shouting at clouds, but also genuine and at times beautiful in its crystalline synth-pop nostalgia.

There’s lots to love but WE can’t match the power of the band’s first four records. Still, Arcade Fire’s returned rejuvenated after time in a cynical wilderness, ready to sing and dance against apathy. This album is worth it for that fact alone.

If Everything Now’s readings of media-age malaise leant towards the grindingly obvious, WE is a partial improvement, give or take singer Win Butler’s occasional clunking takes on modern-life exhaustion.

As a whole, WE is a fairly good album and would be better received if it wasn’t an Arcade Fire album.

If We isn’t a return to the standards Arcade Fire reached on their debut album Funeral or 2010’s The Suburbs, it’s an improvement on its predecessor, and quite possibly enough to avert a slow slide down the festival bills.

All of these gestures are deeply in earnest, and some of them even feel earned. But it’s hard not to hear We as the sound of a band hopefully setting things back in order, with better adventures to come.

This may well be the group’s most sonically diverse outing yet, for good and for ill; even on the many occasions it isn’t convincing, it often manages enough novelty to entertain nonetheless, and Nigel Godrich's impeccable production job certainly makes the whole affair easy on the ears.

Somehow, Arcade Fire have created an album that’s one half an exciting return to form and the other a continuation of their worst impulses.

Despite its occasional moments of brilliance, “We” too often finds Arcade Fire stuck in a digital maze of its own design, ignoring the fact that it’s always sounded more at home off the grid.

It’s a record filled with trite sentiments and well-trodden musical ideas (or in some cases, badly-trodden).