Play time
Arcade Fire are scathing about instant online gratification but their new release is perversely moreish
The mighty Montreal collective Arcade Fire have made a glorious career of carving uplifting anthems out of dark lyrical places, starting with their 2005 debut album Funeral, inspired by the deaths of loved ones around the time of recording.
But never have they sounded so playful around serious subject matter as on fifth album Everything
Now. Its effervescent, Abba-tastic title track bursts into disco life as if resolved to dance itself dizzy around the information overload of the digital age where “every song I’ve ever heard is playing at the same time, it’s absurd”.
There are two additional alternative iterations of the song, as if to drive home the theme, and further ambivalence on Signs of
Life which celebrates/censures the pursuit of hedonistic oblivion through the medium of fingerpopping 70s street funk, with needling disco strings, sirens, a rhythmic vocal delivery and a couple of Michael Jackson-like gasps.
The most uncomfortable juxtaposition comes on Creature
Comfort where crunchy new romantic synths nuzzle up against lyrics about suicidal intent to create one of the strongest earworm hooks in their catalogue, with Win Butler in declamatory mode and Regine Chassagne cheerleading “on and on, I don’t know what I want” at his side. The nosebleed new wave of Infinite
Content barrels along at the speed of social media before breaking into
Infinite_content, a laidback twanging country version of the same song. There are less successful excursions into juddery dub (Peter Pan )and a double whammy of ska and 80s power rock on the non-compatible
Chemistry, but the neon motorik odyssey Put Your Money On Me, with its earnest offer of succour, is what all the coolest car stereos will be wearing this summer. For an album about the perils of instant and constant gratification, Everything Now is perversely moreish.
Few bands – in fact, no bands – can equal The Fall for sheer ruthless consistency over a 40-year career span. Linchpin Mark E Smith turned 60 earlier this year and appears to have entered a period of relative lineup stability, all the better to rip in to a 32nd studio offering which opens with the forceful, metallic repetition of Folderol.
Smith sounds hoarier than ever, almost demonic as he cackles and snarls over the punk regimentation of his crack team, switching between upbeat guitar riffing and garage metal on Brillo de Facto and the Sabbathlike stoner rock and gonzo rockabilly swagger of the nine-minute Couples
Vs Jobless Mid 30s. The brief but
unsettling Victoria Train Station
Massacre has caught some heat, but was written and recorded long before the terror attack on Manchester Arena, and there is even some humorous respite. Second House Now goofs around before hitting its heatseeking stride, while the rest of the band cameo as a cowboy chorus on
Groundsboy.
Alice Cooper has built a career on rock mischief – little wonder that U2’s Larry Mullen, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover want to join the party on his first album of original material in six years. Paranormal is, ironically, business as per ghoulish usual for the cartoonish, almost cuddly Cooper, from the efficient power pop rock of Paranoiac Personality via the rollicking blues boogie of Fallen In
Love to the Rocky Horror glam of Dynamite Road.
The veteran shock rocker has also reunited with original Alice Cooper Band members Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith and Michael Bruce for
two new songs – Genuine American
Girl (Alice has always been gender
fluid) and the Who-influenced You
and All of Your Friends – which kicks off a bonus CD of live hits.
Smith sounds almost demonic as he cackles and snarls over the punk regimentation of his crack team