Album Review: Arcade Fire "Everything Now"

1 1/2 out of 5

"Infinite content, we're infinitely content, all your money is already spent" Win Butler groaned at me through the pseudo-Punk track "Infinite Content" twenty minutes after I had just dropped a solid thirteen bucks for the physical copy of  "Everything Now" at an area Target. As the lyrics and melody morphed into follow up track "Infinite_Content" (the same song now in a folksy Country Rock style!), I felt something I had never felt before during an Arcade Fire album: an infinite stretch of the "blahs".
"Everything Now" starts and ends with a short looping track that if played on repeat will allow the album to play seamlessly forever, which would be a cute novelty if the rest of the album merited more than one listen. Next, the title track apes the Disco-Pop stylings of ABBA and harps on the listener like a Fox News pundit yelling about young people and their incessant need to have everything all the time instantly. The band even drops a little lithe woodwind into the song at the halfway point because "some Jethro Tull flautistry was sorely needed," said no one ever.
The band then goes on to mimic "Rapture" era Blondie with "Signs Of Life"; four minutes of MC Lil Win talk-rapping over generic New Wavey Disco/Funk. And take a guess at what the lyrics are about: those damn cool kids who just don't care about nothing with their retro fashions and cigarettes!
"Creature Comforts" starts promisingly enough with an Industrial pulse that could've been lifted off of a Nine Inch Nails song before blurring into warm keyboards and welcome nods to the Cure but ultimately flops with lyrics about boys hating their dads and girls wanting to kill themselves because they can't be famous. I'm left scratching my head wondering who exactly this song is aimed at with so much disingenuous teenage angst. Add in one fart joke and you've got a killer Blink 182 song here.
The next four tracks are completely disposable: "Peter Pan" and "Chemistry" are Reggae Rock tracks that should appeal to whatever crossover demographic Arcade Fire shares with 311. Then the "Infinite Content"s (both with and without the underscore) that follow offer nothing more than one refrain built upon an unfunny pun that's repeated ad nauseam.
"Electric Blue" works because it's the obligatory Régine Chassagnes cut and she's always a bright spot on Arcade Fire albums, although I think the vocals are processed to such a degree that they (and the lyrics) are mostly unintelligible, which really sucks because this is the album's stand out and it's still brazenly flawed.
And it's right around the time "Electric Blue" ends that I stop engaging with this album.
I've listened to it over a dozen times and right as the slinky minimalist white boy Funk of "Good God, Damn" would start I began noticing that I was repeatedly checking out. "Put your Money On Me" and "We Don't Deserve Love" are fine, I guess. They're both slower, moodier tracks, but by this juncture I'm not interested. Like every other song on the album they both swirl around a line that gets repeated so many times I skip before the song even ends. They very well might be amazing tracks, but after the relentless hodge-podge of the first thirty minutes my brain refuses to let me slog any further.
Arcade Fire have the distinction of being one of the few bands in the crowded digital age that can still make full length albums that matter to a wide array of people. Instead of being a concise work this feels like several disparate EPs that have been spliced together; one's Reggae, one's Disco, one is made of pre-Reflektor b-sides, and literally none of them flow together or command your attention. "EN" feels less like a cohesive statement and more like a half-hearted mixtape.
"Everything Now" is more than just a dud it's loudly uninspired. To make matters worse it openly loathes the listener for engaging with it (let's not forget that this album is media content most likely being streamed while the listener intakes other "infinite content") and makes damn sure to preach its soggy diaper tirades like a grumpy grandpa who can't handle that the times have indeed changed. The band whinges from whining about celebrity and fame to complaining about people a decade younger than them being hip without even wearing through one application of Bengay. They even manage to work in references to some poor girl who likes their album "Funeral" so much she fills up the bath tub and almost slits her wrists to it on a handful of songs. I don't know if this scenario is based on an actual event or just meant to be edgy but I do know that in either case it comes across as arrogant callousness. Good job, guys!
Maybe the biggest takeaway is this: While I was in an aisle at Safeway the god-awful song "Rude" by Pop-Reggae band Magic! was ending, and as it finished on came "Everything Now" in a fluid smearing of one Pop song into the next. If there was any shred of subversiveness hidden in the track it was lost on the army of shoppers milling around the cereal section. Sheryl Crow came on next and I could feel the exact moment that Arcade Fire went from being a band that mattered to a band that existed comfortably on generic Pop radio stations, wedged between the Justin Biebers and Lumineers of the world.
At the end of it I think I'll give into the subtext of this album and go engage with other content infinitely, instead of this, and be infinitely content about it.