Everything Now

Ultimately it’s the album’s sense of humanity, not its innate clever-cleverness, that elevates it to something special.

The album is a fascinating look at the inherent danger of technological oversaturation and the detachment that comes with it.

Like Everything Now‘s subject matter, Arcade Fire gets a bit excessive--yet their fearlessness has resulted in some of the most ambitious music of their career.

Arcade Fire's tightest and tersest album since 2004's Funeral is by far its least ambitious, and the band is cool to riff on this. [No. 145, p.53]

It’s only when Arcade Fire nail down specifics that they stop just adding to the digital churn and give you actual shivers.

More comfortable in their dancing shoes, Arcade Fire have it both ways on Everything Now, zeroing in on our modern malaise while taking inspiration from more concise dance-pop styles.

The result is by far Arcade Fire's most upbeat and easily digestible album to date.

Their ambition is never in doubt though, and Everything Now brings some of their most sky-reaching moments yet.

“Reflektor” lacked killer tunes to go with its propulsive grooves, whereas this album is filled with them--including two separate tracks that recall Abba.

The music glistens and gleams. ... An intoxicating ride. [Sep 2017, p.34]

As cynical as it is whimsical, with their fifth album Arcade Fire have bridged the gap between actuality and aspiration.

Everything Now could stand to be more disciplined, though its looseness is also a reminder of how Arcade Fire leaped past its indie-rock peers by being an honest-to-goodness hot, swinging combo, feeding off each other and the crowd. Building off those chops and that adulation, Win Butler and his mates developed a sound as ornate, ceremonial, and transcendent as a church service.

So view Everything Now as a glass half empty due to its inconsistency or as a glass half full of standout singles. You won’t be able to ignore it though, which, in today’s crowded musical landscape, is triumph in itself.

When it’s good, it’s very, very good--but it’s also flawed. Such is the band’s conviction to capturing their reservations about our on-demand culture, it’s hard not to feel drained by the end.

If the refusal to play to old strengths has a slightly scattergun effect, it’s hard to begrudge this slightly mad record. There will be those Everything Now alienates, but Arcade Fire are not your corporate product.

Everything Now doesn’t stretch out so much as it spreads itself thin, which is why it won’t ripple out like other Arcade Fire records. In the end, the band that made neighborhoods sound endless makes Everything into a cul-de-sac.

It’s their weakest album by far. But there are segments of radiant brilliance that will make you wonder what could have been. Going forward, the band needs to regain their balance and find that grounded perspective while reaching for the stars again.

Overall, there is just enough on Everything Now to appease fans and attract newcomers with accessible singles, but as an Arcade Fire record, it's unfortunately too inconsistent and ultimately hollow. Arcade Fire sought to make a Big Statement but instead produced one of their least impactful works.

There are songs worth hearing and genuinely thrilling music here--but rather a flawed one.

The [title] song finds a breezy balance between earnestness and exhilaration. Elsewhere, that balance falters, and Everything Now becomes a slighter album than its predecessors.

Even the Hey Jude-y crowd singalong works. ... The album as a whole also has a coldness that threatens to undermine the point that Everything Now strives to make. [Sep 2017, p.87]

They're not back at their best, but on Everything Now, Arcade Fire once again sound like the world-beaters they were on The Suburbs without forgoing the acidity, swagger and scope of Reflektor.

While there is still plenty to love here, Everything Now feels like Arcade Fire's first non-essential album which is a serious matter given their illustrious back-catalogue.

Everything Now offers an underwhelming kind of overload: too much, but still not quite enough. [Aug 2017, p.113]

For an album that otherwise condemns the materialism and narcissism of the modern world, Everything Now works best when it practises what it preaches: block out the superfluous noise for direct appeals to the heart.

In a word, Everything Now finds Arcade Fire in a place they’ve never been. It’s unsubstantial.

Butler’s commitment to the detached frontman where singing occurs barely or not at all robs songs of their emotional largesse, that basic thing we licensed to Arcade Fire and upon which their entire identity relies. What saving grace there is on Everything Now is scattered throughout its mercifully short 47 minutes.

Arcade Fire are a great band, spurning a generation of indie listeners and have influenced countless groups. Which is what makes listening to Everything Now that much more painful. This is the band as a shell of themselves, an uninspiring slog of half-baked ideas following a "trying-by-not-trying" attitude.

The concept of the record is solid, but the execution is lacking.

["Creature Comfort" is] one of the album's strongest moments, matched by "Electric Blue," in which Regine Chassagne's delicate voice floats over a wistful yet hypnotic electro groove. Much of the rest struggles to stay buoyant.

Whereas previous shifts in sound were organic, the product of natural growth, this one comes off as obligatory and cheap, as if there were nowhere else to go. For the first time in their career, Arcade Fire haven’t made a record; they’ve manufactured one.

While not entirely lacking new ideas (the louche, second version of Infinite Content would make Wilco proud), Everything Now feels like a brainstorming idea with one too many executives in the boardroom.

Despite these few fleeting moments of greatness, Everything Now feels like the band's first missfire record of their career, with its lack of a focused concept, cohesiveness and heart.

The only thing Arcade Fire’s Everything Now is about is Arcade Fire, which is its most pernicious and pathetic quality. Arcade Fire are no longer Orpheus and Eurydice, lovers doomed to tragedy; now they are Narcissus, the Greek hunter who lost the will to live after staring at his own reflection in a pond for too long. They ask their listeners to participate in this cynicism as they grasp so falsely at explanations for why “we” are like this.

The sourness of their newfound perspective might be one thing if the music sounded any good, but doesn’t. Arcade Fire have re-committed to running away from their once sky-scraping stadium sound, further experimenting with the island sounds and disco grooves that bloated 2013’s Reflektor.

Everything Now feels like everything's dead as it lacks any sort of freshness or intrigue.

It leaves you yearning for an album that would have expanded the mature melodicism of those three tracks [“Electric Blue,” “Put Your Money on Me” and “We Don’t Deserve Love”]. Instead, their presence magnifies the smarmy, sophomoric awfulness of everything else here.