Today ‘Pink Ephant’, the seventh album by Arcade Fire is put into circulation. The album receives its name from the concept of “pink elephant”, which refers to when the effort to suppress a thought leads to it impossible to avoid it.
‘Pink Elephant’ is also Arcade Fire’s first album since Win Butler received a series of complaints for abuse from several women. Butler argued that these relationships were from another era that he was not well mentally, he said that they were all agreed and also had problems with alcohol consumption to Covid. His wife Régine responded for him. The complaints seemed not to have an effect on their tour, and at least in Madrid they acted before 15,000 people as if nothing had happened.
The fire test for continuity by filling Arenas that is this new album has not had a huge previous impact. There have been no debates about his single ‘Year of the Snake’ as it did with ‘Refrackor’, ‘Everything Now’, or even the singles of ‘We’. It gives the feeling that the complaints, linked to some records that after ‘The Suburbs’ and above all ‘reflector’, have been increasingly and more questioned, leads them to failure. Or at least a certain media and social emptiness. Of course, they are not offering interviews.
The first criticisms collected in Metacritic paint badly. After the first 6 reviews, the album exceeds the approved only by the hairs, being one of the worst valued of the year (54/100). The texts speak of a lack of inspiration that critics place “10 years ago”, and some of the arguments are against letters.
Slant Magazine considers unfortunate, in this context, the phrase “I will define the perfect girl, I will make her my world and put her into a pedestal” of the last theme, ‘Stuck in My Head’. And the phrase of the single ‘Year of the Snake’ is also being questioned, among others, I tried to be good, but I am a normal boy / my heart is made of love / is not made of wood ».
The album is zambulle in different styles. Of the 10 cuts, 3 work as an intro or interlude, 2 of them around the minute duration. The single ‘Year of the Snake’ is to sing quietly, far from the pomposity of its beginnings. Then, the songs swarm between the synthetic, the acoustic and the rocker, without adopting a particular outfit. The Focus Track, ‘Circle of Trust’, is surprised, for its delivery to the Synth-Pop of Visage or New Order. Similar is ‘I love her shadow’, an electro resurrection after the folkie ‘ride or die’.
Yes The aforementioned ‘Stuck in My Head’, extended up to 7 minutes, is the most arcade Fire itself.
Sony says that ‘Pink Elephant’ «invites the listener to a sound odyssey, a search for life, which exists within the perception of the individual, a meditation on darkness and light, inner beauty». They add that “the layers of this condensed epic display to reveal new dimensions with each listening.” Certainly a couple of songs point to “Growers”, as was ‘Year of the Snake’. What we do not know is whether after what happened, everyone will give them a chance. Maybe they had to have done twice as well at this juncture.
Charging …