At a triumphant gig to celebrate the reopening of London music venue Koko last week, Arcade Fire concluded their set with the inflation of eight giant tube men. There’s no better metaphor for the way the Canadian indie rockers’ sixth album makes you feel. Rebooting the euphoria of their 2004 debut, Funeral, WE is a big old blast of an album. One destined to lift the spirit, inflate the soul and get fans dancing giddily through the carnage of 2022.
Interviewed in The Guardian last week, frontman Win Butler explained that this is an album of two halves. The first explores the jittery isolation of modern life. The second resolves that tension by hymning the hard-won joy of unconditional love. Butler said he’d been inspired in part by concept albums such as Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, which give songs space to stretch, swell and breathe. Writing during lockdown with his wife and bandmate, Régine Chassagne, he created a sequence of seven moods and melodies that all have the flexibility to evolve in compelling ways.
