ARCADE FIRE MAKES BIG MOVE
Album could catapult indie darlings
Have you heard of this band Arcade Fire? They’re going to be huge. No, really huge.
Arcade Fire has dominated the indie rock landscape for more than a decade, surviving changing times by continually reinventing itself while somehow maintaining the mystique that shot the band to stardom in the first place, back in 2004, when David Bowie, David Byrne and seemingly everyone else was freaking out about this cool new group from Montreal — cool being the operative word.
Hard as it is to believe, not everyone knows and loves Arcade Fire. When the band won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2011, Barbra Streisand quizzically stuttered the title of their album, “The S -s-suburbs,” while the underdogs reacted with a mixture of euphoria and disbelief to having beat out releases by Eminem, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Lady Antebellum.
Such David vs. Goliath moments may be harder to come by as Arcade Fire embarks on its most unabashed attempt at world domination yet with its aptly titled fifth album Everything Now, due July 28. Make no mistake, this is a turning point. Until now, Arcade Fire has been happily chugging along as the biggest indie rock band around, which in itself is no mean feat. Look back at the trendy indie acts of the early oughts and few are still around, let alone dominating the genre like back in the day.
Arcade Fire started big and stayed big. But it’s about to supersize that combo. The band released its first three albums on respected American indie imprint Merge, moving to major label Capitol for 2013’s Reflektor. On Wednesday, the group announced it has inked a two-album deal with Columbia Records, an important subsidiary of Sony. The Universal Music Group (which owns Capitol) reportedly bid to keep working with Arcade Fire, but the band evidently felt the need to move on.
That, folks, is a power move. Columbia has been around since 1887 and has released albums by Bob Dylan, Bowie, Streisand, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, Adele, Beyoncé, Billy Joel, Depeche Mode, John Mayer, Pharrell Williams and a certain Daft Punk — we’ll get to them in a minute, but you get the picture.
Major labels make power moves as a matter of course. Their sole purpose is getting an artist/band’s music into as many ears as possible
— but the fit has to be right. Arcade Fire has done a pretty good job of getting its music out on its own, and for the most part has resisted mainstream record industry tropes.
Yet it has again bowed to the age-old tradition of the lead single, strategically released to drum up excitement for a new album. Everything Now’s wildly infectious title track dropped on Thursday, exhibiting Arcade Fire’s penchant for crowd-rousing anthems while riding a sleek dance beat.
The latter is assisted by new album co-producers Thomas Bangalter, of iconic French clubland duo Daft Punk; and Steve Mackey, of ’90s Brit-pop act Pulp; who bring the freshness alongside Arcade Fire and longtime collaborator Markus Dravs. The band flirted with electronics on Reflektor, getting help from New York hipster emeritus James Murphy, of LCD Soundsystem. But this feels different, more free and fearlessly groovy. Comparisons to Abba are not off the mark, while the song has reassuring hints of Arcade Fire’s trademark alienation and ennui.
Shot in the desert, the song’s stripped-down video finds wistfully snarling leader Win Butler looking his most frontman-esque yet. Airborne cameras swirl around him and his coveralls-clad bandmates, giving the clip an epic, spit-polished feel. By the time the choir comes in just past the three and-a-half minute mark, they’ve got you hook, line and sinker.
Granted, it’s just one song. But a quick YouTube search turns up Creature Comfort, another new track premièred over the weekend as Arcade Fire launched its European tour at Spain’s Primavera Sound festival. It’s a blistering, electro-tinged number that finds Butler and wife, Régine Chassagne, rap-chanting about distraught boys and girls, self-image problems and suicide attempts, and it will set the party off like nobody’s business.
Oh and did I mention they’re playing the Bell Centre? First time ever as a headliner, Sept. 6 (tickets go on sale Friday). Arcade Fire opened for U2 at the venue on consecutive nights in 2005, but otherwise the band has consciously avoided it, choosing the Maurice-Richard Arena (2007), Place des Festivals (2011) and Parc Jean Drapeau (2014) instead.
Continuing its tradition of unconventional promotional tactics, the group has launched an interactive website, everythingnow.com, which offers options to pre-order the album in multiple formats (digital, CD, coloured vinyl and cassette) with “day bundle” and “night bundle” versions and 20 cover art and language options. On Sunday, the website released the track listing on Twitter via a selection of anagrams, while getting into a mock argument with the band’s official Twitter feed.
Hey, if you’re going to play the corporate game, might as well have fun with it.