Arcade Fire WE review sony music Unconditional II (Race and Religion)

Arcade Fire, WE: REVIEW

“The band’s shortest album still manages to feel epic, and that’s Arcade Fire’s specialty.”

Arcade Fire WE

Arcade Fire, WE (Sony Music)

The first Arcade Fire album in half a decade finds the same band that we’ve always known refocusing, renewing and streamlining their sound, delivering a concise 40-ish minutes of outsider ballads and electric earworms. As with Everything Now, there’s a certain middle-of-the-road quality to some of the material, but there’s always enough going on sonically and lyrically to elevate the songs above easy-listening radio fare. While WE lacks the wall-to-wall rock anthems of Funeral or the wealth of future greatest hits that Reflektor had, the album’s themes — cast in the shadow of the pandemic and American politics — pair perfectly with well-conceived series of two-part songs, with all their melancholy lows and electric highs. As usual, the Régine-led song, “Unconditional II (Race and Religion)” (feat. backup vocals by Peter Gabriel), is a breezy highlight, while “Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” is a stellar piece of dark disco. The album’s nine-minute centrepiece “End of an Empire” deserves repeat listens as it packs a lot in, including a slice of fatalistic glam-rock ballad à la “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide.” The band’s shortest album still manages to feel epic, and that’s Arcade Fire’s specialty. 7.5/10 Trial Track: “Unconditional II (Race and Religion)”

“Unconditional II (Race and Religion)” from WE by Arcade Fire

For more on Arcade Fire, please visit their website.


For more music coverage, please visit the Music section.