Everything Now
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CRITIC REVIEWS
100
The Canadian art-rockers are bigger, bolder and more fearful of the future than ever on their colossal fifth album.
100
The torrent of content we absorb on a daily basis is a topic ripe for art that has been largely been under-explored in music thus far, but Arcade Fire don't do it in sombre and morbid fashion, Everything Now being their most upbeat, joyful album to date.
88
As brainwashing goes, it’s genius—and as a piece of art, Everything Now is not only worthwhile but rather brilliant.
83
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.
80
Whatever it is you crave, chances are you'll find a taste of it here. Whether forging an escape or a space for reality to hit home, Everything Now is a celebration of, well, everything.
80
While there are enough down moments on Everything Now to make many Arcade Fire fans scream they’ve lost their touch, it’s altogether a much more cohesive and tight record than Reflektor.
80
When ‘Everything Now’ clicks, it’s magical, the band as cohesive and dynamic as ever. When pockets of the record feel more like an inside joke that could take time to cotton onto, there’s a sense that Arcade Fire’s urgent desire for, well, everything now, could be a leap too far.
80
The album also marks a clear and surprising shift in Butler's perspective: Rather than sounding crushed by the weight of the world, he seems more resilient, almost chipper. The result is by far Arcade Fire's most upbeat and easily digestible album to date.
80
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.
80
It’s a record that makes maximum yield from competing tensions: old world traditions and new world technology; limitless leisure and endless angst; despair and hope; simple tunes and complex emotions.
80
It’s another big-hearted party album for the end of the world – in the spirit, if not the style, of Gorillaz’s Humanz – and restates Arcade Fire’s rousing, compassionate raison d’être in new iterations.
75
When a group takes as much time between releases as Arcade Fire does—and demonstrates such unapologetic ambition—it’s reasonable to expect that its members have been slowly chiseling away at a masterpiece. Instead, Everything Now feels like the simpler record that frontman Win Butler once meant to make with Reflektor, before the project took on a life of its own.
75
At its best, ‘Everything Now’ is soaring, majestic stuff and very hard to resist.
70
While Reflektor was a more consistent album top to bottom, the peaks on Everything Now are headier.
70
Gravitas was always the band’s defining characteristic, and without that some songs are in danger of flying away (‘Peter Pan’, ‘Good God Damn’) no matter how interesting the sounds that underpin them.
70
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.
60
The megaphone-blown intensity that fuelled the band’s greatest underdog anthems is more diffuse here, diluted by an ironic, irreverent tone that renders some songs frivolous.
60
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.
60
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.
60
The fact that its laudable desire to experiment musically doesn’t always come off isn’t enough to make Everything Now a bad album – there are songs worth hearing and genuinely thrilling music here – but rather a flawed one.
60
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.
60
For the most part, Everything Now is a massive disappointment, a big stumble in Arcade Fire’s career. It’s their weakest album by far. But there are segments of radiant brilliance that will make you wonder what could have been.
60
The choral baroque-pop of their beginnings may be long gone but the character of Arcade Fire: ambition, epic power and an empathetic consideration for society are still present.
60
It’s a solid album that delivers some decent entries into the band’s growing catalog. But it also feels, in spite of all its work to be the next, wider ring in the Arcade Fire atmosphere, slighter than it should.
58
Everything Now finds Arcade Fire in a place they’ve never been. It’s unsubstantial.
56
The “society, man” songs are riddled with cliche, and the love songs are a bore.
50
On ‘Everything Now’, though, that fastidiousness has deserted them, replaced by a minimalism that clearly aims for elegant economy – perhaps inspired by Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, whose production fingerprints are most visible here – but more often feels simply unfinished.
50
For the first time in their career, Arcade Fire haven’t made a record; they’ve manufactured one.
50
Everything Now isn’t bad, it’s dull.
50
This is the band as a shell of themselves, an uninspiring slog of half-baked ideas following a "trying-by-not-trying" attitude. The grandiose heights of Funeral seem light-years away.
40
‘Everything Now' feels like the band's first missfire record of their career, with its lack of a focused concept, cohesiveness and heart.
40
Everything Now finds Arcade Fire making a bolder and tighter move in a dance music direction than on Reflektor, but unfortunately it's even more of a mixed bag.
30
In Everything Now, Arcade Fire insult our intelligence by assuming that we don’t already feel on some level that there’s something wrong with our society and further demean us by offering an album so thoroughly decadent and self-contradictory that any message it might have had to begin with is lost by the wayside.
20
It’s as of now unconfirmed whether Win Butler and the grow-your-own-muesli gang have seriously pissed off a witch, but every particle of their songwriting talent seems to have magically dissipated. Everything Now never fucks with interest or novelty, and is frequently unlistenable.
NME are the biggest kiss ass reviewers I swear
Edit: I have to be honest with myself, this has grown on me. I think my initial anger was just because I love Arcade Fire and was expecting a top tier album which it clearly isn't. However, apart from tracks 6,7,8, the album really isn't that bad.
After accepting the album for what it is I'm able to enjoy it a lot more. Instead of listening to it from a critical perspective I'm just listening to it as a Arcade Fire fan which I'm okay with.
Edit: I have to be honest with myself, this has grown on me. I think my initial anger was just because I love Arcade Fire and was expecting a top tier album which it clearly isn't. However, apart from tracks 6,7,8, the album really isn't that bad.
After accepting the album for what it is I'm able to enjoy it a lot more. Instead of listening to it from a critical perspective I'm just listening to it as a Arcade Fire fan which I'm okay with.
I like how they made it loop back around to the beginning at the end as if anybody is ever going to want to listen to this album twice.
I don't know anything about music. My response to a piece of music has always been emotional rather than analytical or critical. I don't have the background or technical understanding to explain or talk about music.
This album hits me. Oddly, it reminds me of Kanye West's The Life of Pablo. Like Pablo, it's a work brimming with energy and ideas. Like Pablo, it feels like a record constantly shifting, pivoting, and subverting the listener's shallow expectations of what the artist responsible ... read more
This album hits me. Oddly, it reminds me of Kanye West's The Life of Pablo. Like Pablo, it's a work brimming with energy and ideas. Like Pablo, it feels like a record constantly shifting, pivoting, and subverting the listener's shallow expectations of what the artist responsible ... read more
Sorta feels like Arcade Fire tried to make something that everyone would like, including those outside of their core fan base, which was a huge misstep. Disco worship and overblown stadium rock are some of the failed endeavors on Everything Now, with very little that is any better than just okay. The only song that i've been returning to, surprisingly, is Electric Blue, a song i was shaky on at first but had grown on me over time (still not a great song, but it's alright).
Personally I think the change in sound could have worked. The title track is a brilliant nu-disco tune which I was on board with, however, the album soon dwindles as some of these tracks are real duds, as well as some of them going on for a bit too long without much happening, we still get good moments like on Creature Comfort or We Don't Deserve Love. Everything Now is an album which I think had the potential to be something solid but ultimately falls short.
Best Track: Everything Now
Worst ... read more
Best Track: Everything Now
Worst ... read more
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Track List
- Everything_Now (continued)
- Everything Now
- Signs of Life
- Creature Comfort
- Peter Pan
- Chemistry
- Infinite Content
- Infinite_Content
- Electric Blue
- Good God Damn
- Put Your Money on Me
- We Don’t Deserve Love
- Everything Now (continued)
In Library (175)
stereogum.com
Listen: Arcade Fire – “Baby Mine” pitchfork.com
Arcade Fire Play 'Funeral' in Full pitchfork.com
Watch Arcade Fire Perform on “SNL” 
Added on: June 1, 2017
