Reflektor – Arcade Fire (2013)

Final Rating: 9.5 

“It’s just a reflektor” became a bit of an inside joke online as people awaited the misspelled album “Reflektor” by Arcade Fire; their first album since winning a grammy for Album of the Year for The Suburbs, and their first since many publications called Funeral one of the best albums of all time. “It’s just a relfektor” became funny because of people quoting the title track through social media and it seemed to stick out as an answer to any possible question (Why is this a double album? “It’s just a reflektor”). But as we can hear, the album is anything but a joke. The concept of reflections (or, rather, reflektions) is what makes this album go from a good release to a captivating release. As this album is disco influenced (as well, influences from African music, new wave and funk can be found here), the first reflections I can see are that of a disco ball, spreading in as many places as possible, which Reflektor does effortlessly. One light hits the ball, and it cannot be contained thereafter.

The rock life is just like a disco ball distributing beams of light to countless places. The first disc has The Arcade Fire taking on the night life in what seems like a club (it’s difficult to not separate the infectious “Here Comes the Night Time music video with a disc that implies it is life at times). This is Arcade Fire at their most energetic, with wailing guitars on Here Comes the Night Time, pounding drums and chants that follow bagpipes and low quality punk on Joan of Arc, and the sleazily hazy guitar tune Flashbulb Eyes. If this first disc of a rock star life encapsulated within a seamless connection of different night venues is a representation of anything, it’s that Arcade Fire can reinvent their music and still take on the world. This is partially due to the hand of producer James Murphy, the brains behind the disco revival project LCD Soundsystem, whose passion for escalating and lengthy tracks of similar ideas circulating amidst the ceiling fan can clearly be heard on this album.

On a similar note, disc 2 features the majority of the lengthier songs and is much more bittersweet. It starts off with a second rendition of Here Comes the Night Time that doesn’t seem happy, but instead is full of longing. This night time is no longer a night of partying, but is instead a night of loneliness and darkness. The album takes a dive into a classic Greek mythological tale of Eurydice and Orpheus, of whom are featured on the album cover beautifully. Orpheus was a musician whose love Eurydice had passed away and was trapped in the underworld. Having moved Hades with his music, Orpheus was allowed into the underworld to bring Eurydice back to life under one condition: He mustn’t look back behind him to see that Eurydice was still following him until they were both back on Earth. Just as Orpheus was on Earth he had looked back at Eurydice of whom was just at the edge of the underworld. She was dragged back into the underworld and would remain dead forever.

This idea, oddly enough, is represented on the entire album. The music played at night to cure the world of darkness. The concept of life and death (through We Exist and Afterlife). Most importantly it’s with the two songs Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice) (through Orpheus’s eyes) and It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus) sung through mostly Eurydice’s perspective but is joined in by Orpheus as well, as perhaps a self reflection). Orpheus and Eurydice are “played” by husband and wife vocalists Win Butler and Régine Chassagne; A clever play on the Chassagne’s vocal deliveries on the album, thus changing what the title song Reflektor could even represent when she sings in French and tries to ensure Butler that, again, “it’s just a reflektor”. Was she trying to remind him that the album is just an album and that she wouldn’t disappear into the afterlife permanently? Is the album just a dizzying spiraling down into the deepest pits of despair, whether it be through a night on the town or through a journey into hell itself?

The album begins with a pre-track of ten minutes of disco indie ambience that seems to preview sounds and ideas found on the album, almost like the minutes of darkness that just had music before Lawrence of Arabia to engage the audience in a bit of a sample of what is to come (this pre-track can be heard by rewinding the first song on the album). This same kind of ambience is heard at the very end of the album after Supersymmetry; a subdued and depressing song. Suddenly this album turns into the dive into the underworld Orpheus took on. This is the travel into chaos, and the long travel out alone after misery has already hit us. This is the exciting feeling of rushing to find a loved one on disc 1, and the harrowing return on disc 2. A song like Porno is catchy and funky but is still downright depressing lyrically and vocally (and sometimes musically with the damning pianos that squash the grooving bass below, representing harsh realities). Suddenly nothing matters to us as we are stuck focusing on the second last track Afterlife; one of the most beautiful songs of the year.

Reflektor is a journey that lasts an hour and a half but will certainly not feel long. It is a good book that opens up so many worlds and coasts through so many emotions. In Afterlife, Butler begs to know “where does it go?” before asking where Eurydice, or Chassagne, went. Where does Reflektor go from here? It ends in oblivion in Supersymmetry. The painful truth is here: Reflektor doesn’t end happily. Yet it sifts back into the ambience amongst the stars in the night sky, the same way it traveled down to Earth. The story will happen again and again and again. You’ll want it to, too. I sure as hell did. I wanted to hear David Bowie’s warnings in the title track from the eyes of a rock legend who experienced stardom, a downfall in the eighties, and a recent come back with open arms. I wanted to run through the stores and amongst the street performers that busied the city at night again. I wanted to experience a mortal being crushed and living vicariously through death until he ascended out of his depression into the cluttered sky above. I wanted to do it all over again.

This album travels through many themes that we can easily identify with. It exhibits feelings of having an identity amongst the crowds of the world. It shows the loss of a loved one, whether it be lonely at night wondering where your friends are (I wouldn’t be surprised if James Murphy was an influence here) or if you yourself were the reason why the love of your life is now gone forever from your own insecurities. With disco, it keeps us alive. With world music, it becomes universal. With Arcade Fire’s signature heartfelt baroque pop style, it takes a grip inside of us and never lets go. Reflektor speaks of rock stars, Greek myths, Joan of Arc’s impact on the world, and more, but it mostly speaks about death. Death is inevitable. Will we reincarnate after we die like the album does? Who knows. For now, we should party and live while we are alive, and Reflektor allows us to revisit the happier first disc at any time, as well as the second disc if we ever want to stare reality in the face. In the end, this album mirrors all of us at its very core amongst all of its eccentricities. In the end, it really was “just a reflektor”.