Arcade Fire

WE

Lyrically rather than musicallly, WE has an endless cycle thought.

It may have taken a pandemic for it to happen, but We feels like a return to what they do best: writing epic, emotive songs that connect with audiences, whatever their size. It’s good to have them back.

WE is not a perfect record by a long way but it is a record that curiously seems exactly suited to its time. From both a critical and emotional perspective, for the first time in many years Arcade Fire appear truly human again.

What differentiates WE from Everything Now is the strength of the surrounding songwriting. If ABBA-esque disco was a strange shoe fit for a band once well-beloved as the patron saints of modern indie rock, by returning to the stylings that defined their first decade together Arcade Fire have made their strongest record since The Suburbs.

At its best ... WE reminds listeners what made this group the indie giants that they are and even makes a case that for all our irony-fuelled nihilism, a little earnestness, and perhaps even hope, aren’t always such a bad thing.

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.

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.

It’s uneven, uncertain, even uncharismatic in some places. 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.

As to whether they fulfil that restart bid, the answer is guardedly affirmative, in keeping with WE’s two-sided balance of ongoing struggle and endurance.

WE asserts Arcade Fire’s dominance over their amorphous influencesphere as decisively as it asserts that they have very little of interest or import to say about pretty much anything.

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 with WE.

It’s perhaps no surprise after such a poorly received misfire that they should go here, and some of WE will trigger your sentimentality for this once great band, but ultimately it leaves a void. It’s not the end of the empire, and probably not the end of Arcade Fire, but it sounds like it should be.

If you've heard "The Lightning I-II," you've heard the only excitement WE has to offer.