Arcade Fire’s ‘We’ Marks a Welcome Return to Band’s Trademark Apocalyptic Good Cheer: Album Review

variety.com:

Zack Ruskin Though the threat of apocalypse has long loomed large throughout their discography, Arcade Fire’s driving energy has, by contrast, always been found in songs that invite us to embrace the full-throated catharsis that comes from remembering we’re alive.

While just over a decade ago, Win Butler was lamenting the fantasized loss of San Francisco and singing about packing it in, on Arcade Fire’s superb new sixth album, it appears things have only gotten worse.

Now it’s all of California he imagines being lost, but despite the devastation, Butler concedes that it’s “not half bad” in the opening minutes of a dazzling new suite entitled “End of the Empire I-IV.”Whether or not you believe him is a solid indicator as to what you’ll make of “We.” Serving as Arcade Fire’s first release in five years, the record eschews the ill-fitting cynicism of their last effort and instead doubles down on the rafters-shaking brand of earnest rock that will forever be its signature calling card.

For the married duo of Butler and Régine Chassagne, it’s a formula that’s worked wonders since their band first hit the scene with 2004’s “Funeral.” That record kicked off a meteoric rise for Arcade Fire, who rapidly went from indie darlings to festival headliners to Grammy winners for album of the year.Given how that all took place in a span of six years, it’s understandable that the group (which also features Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara, and, until last year, Win’s brother, Will Butler) would subsequently look to explore a bit of new territory.