>http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/arcade-fires-reflektor-still-devoid-of-wit-subtlety-and-danger-now-with-bongos/2013/10/28/6471097a-4004-11e3-9c8b-e8deeb3c755b_story.html
>
>Arcade Fire’s ‘Reflektor’: Still devoid of wit, subtlety and
>danger, now with bongos
>
>By Chris Richards, Published: October 28
>
>Look, I’m sure they’re very nice people, but on their fourth
>album, “Reflektor,” Arcade Fire still sound like gigantic
>dorks with boring sex lives.
>
>After winning a Grammy for album of the year in 2011, they’re
>still the biggest rock band on the block, still making music
>mysteriously devoid of wit, subtlety and danger. And now,
>they’re really into bongo drums, too. We should all be
>repulsed. Only partially because of the bongos.
>
>Mostly because this is rock music that lazily presumes life on
>the digital plane has made us so numb, so unable to feel for
>ourselves, that the only way to reach our hearts is by
>applying a pneumatic hammer to our classic rock pleasure
>centers. Bowie! Springsteen! Talking Heads! Blam-blam-blam!
>Bludgeoning and vacant, “Reflektor” is an album that both
>condescends and sells itself short, over and over again, for
>76 insufferable minutes.
>
>The band’s problems are laid bare early with “We Exist,” a
>mid-tempo sulker that initially sounds like Fleetwood Mac
>trying to moonwalk through “Billie Jean” in uncomfortable
>footwear. Frontman Win Butler — still as dreadful a lyricist
>as ever — tries to correct his charisma deficiency with an
>affected sneer: “You’re down on your knees, begging us please,
>praying that we don’t exist.” (Dramatic pause.) “We exist!”
>
>They exist! But who are they? After four albums, Arcade Fire
>are still struggling to present themselves as distinct and
>compelling human beings. Their anthems feel like cavernous
>vessels vast enough to stow the most bloated of emotions, but
>it’s always been on the listener to fill them up.
>
>Too frequently on “Reflektor,” Butler’s lyrics assume a murky
>us-against-them posture. It’s intended to feel like an
>insidery group hug, but it only highlights his band’s chronic
>personality gap. And when co-vocalist Regine Chassagne
>materializes to play Butler’s vocal foil, she toggles between
>cheerleadery English and breathy French, because — ooh-la-la —
>it wraps these bland songs in a thin cloak of cosmopolitan
>sophistication.
>
>Butler is at his most irritating with “Normal Person,” pulling
>David Byrne’s oversize blazer out of the closet and asking,
>“Is anything as strange as a normal person? Is anyone as cruel
>as a normal person?”
>
>You tell us, dude. When a band this massively popular, this
>risk-averse, this patently un-weird takes heartfelt shots at
>the “norms,” it’s hard to decide whether to laugh, barf or
>weep for the future of rock-and-roll itself.
>
>Because great art should crack away at what came before,
>right? This band has spent the past nine years dutifully
>re-creating it, namely the ponderous grandeur of U2. And on
>“Reflektor,” they’ve done it with the help of producer James
>Murphy, the former LCD Soundsystem frontman whose good taste
>has now been thrown in question.
>
>He has swaddled “Reflektor” in warm analog synthesizers and
>stretched it over a bongo-popping grid, doing his best
>imitation of Brian Eno, the guru behind David Bowie’s “Low,”
>Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light” and U2’s “Achtung Baby.”
>
>But “Reflektor” isn’t neoclassicism. It’s something
>conservative pretending to be something bold. It’s Sandra
>Bullock’s hack dialogue in “Gravity.” It’s square, sexless,
>deeply unstylish, painfully obvious rock music. It’s an album
>with a song called “Porno” that you could play for your
>parents. It’s fraud.
>