Reflektor

This article is about the Arcade Fire album. For the album's title track, see Reflektor (song).

Untitled

Reflektor is the fourth studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on October 28, 2013. A double album, Reflektor was produced by former LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, regular Arcade Fire producer Markus Dravs and the band itself.

Influenced by Haitian rara music, the 1959 film Black Orpheus and Søren Kierkegaard's essay, "The Present Age", Reflektor's release was preceded by a guerrilla marketing campaign inspired by veve drawings, and the release of a limited edition single, "Reflektor", credited to the fictional band, The Reflektors, on September 9, 2013.

Background

The album's origins stem from a trip that both vocalist and guitarist Win Butler and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne took to her family's home country of Haiti. Butler noted, "Going to Haiti for the first time with Regine was the beginning of a major change in the way that I thought about the world. Usually, I think you have most of your musical influences locked down by the time you're 16. There was a band I [feel] changed me musically, just really opened me up to this huge, vast amount of culture and influence I hadn't been exposed to before, which was really life-changing." Inspired by the country's rara music, Butler and Chassagne incorporated elements of this sound into the band's new material, alongside Jamaican influences. Butler stated, "I mean, it's not like our band trying to play Haitian music. I just felt like we were opened up to a new influence. Bob Marley probably felt the same way the first time he heard Curtis Mayfield."

Recording

Recording in Louisiana, the band began work on Reflektor in 2011, and subsequently moved to Jamaica the following year with producer Markus Dravs. Working on roughly sixty song ideas, the band wrote and recorded in an abandoned castle, named Trident: "The castle was built in 1979, or something, by this eccentric Jamaican dude who just wanted to hang out with royalty. And it kind of worked. After about five years he couldn't afford to pay the bill, so it had been sitting empty for many years. I met a dude who was planning on turning it into a hotel, so we just rented it off him for cheap and there was nothing in there. We brought in some beds and a piano and some gear."

In August 2012, the band also began working with producer and former LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy, whom the band had been wanting to work with for over six years. Butler noted, "LCD Soundsystem to me is like New Order and the B-52's and we deeply share a lot of those influences, and we did completely different things with it. Régine is kind of the person who dances. At any given minute, if you can get Régine to dance, you're kind of on the right track, so I think we just wanted to make a record that Régine could dance to."

Regarding the band's decision to record a double album, Win Butler stated, "The record is really long. We intended to make a short record and we ended up with 18 songs that were all between six and eight minutes and we were like, 'Uh oh, I think we screwed up making a short record.' Splitting it over the two halves enables you to get into the different worlds of the records."

Writing and composition

Primary lyricist Win Butler notes that the 1959 film, Black Orpheus, inspired his lyrics on Reflektor, in particular its themes of isolation and death: "Black Orpheus is one of my favorite films of all time, which is set in Carnival in Brazil. The Orpheus myth is the original love triangle, Romeo and Juliet kind of story. Lyrically, it's not literally about my life. I feel like I'm kind of a bit of a sponge in a way. Like, if people around me are going through things, I find it very hard not to be empathetic." Also influential to the album's lyrical content is an essay by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, entitled "The Present Age". Butler states, "[It's] about the reflective age. This is like in 1846, and it sounds like he's talking about modern times. He's talking about the press and alienation, and you kind of read it and you're like, 'Dude, you have no idea how insane it's gonna get.'"

The album tracks, "Here Comes the Night Time" and "Here Comes the Night Time II", each appear on the album's respective halves, with Butler noting, "The second one was actually written first and it almost starts the second half of the record – kind of like after the [Haitian] Carnival. Both of them are very much influenced by when the sun is just starting to go down in Port au Prince, and it's really intense because most of the city doesn't have electricity so everyone is just racing to get home before dark." The first of the two tracks references missionaries, in part: "The absurdity that you can go to a place like Haiti and teach people something about God. Like, the opposite really seems to be true, in my experience."

Promotional campaign

An example of the Reflektor graffiti.

In early August, a cryptic logo, which incorporated the word "reflektor", appeared on the walls of cities around the world. The street art was reported to be part of a guerrilla marketing campaign for the new Arcade Fire album. The upcoming album and its release date had already been announced via a message on Twitter, written as a reply to a single fan. An Instagram account posted pictures of the symbol, and included a video of one being drawn.

On August 26, Arcade Fire confirmed that the work was related to them, with a large mural on a building in downtown Manhattan, which included four of the symbols and the words "Arcade Fire 9pm 9/9". On September 9, 2013, the band released two videos for the first single and title track from the album. Win Butler later wrote that the Reflektor graffiti was inspired by Haitian veve drawings.

The Reflektor campaign received negative publicity when an article that appeared in Slate in September 2013 depicted instances of property damage that resulted from the advertisements. The band made an apology, explaining that the viral wall stencils were meant to use chalk or other washable media, rather than spray paint, nor binding glues under the paper advertisements.

The build-up to the release of the album was described by Pitchfork as "unusual, ambitious, vague, confounding, a little heavy-handed, and very successful". It was compared to similar campaigns for albums by Daft Punk and Kanye West, also released in 2013. In such campaigns, the music itself becomes one part of a wider experience. Although the events surrounding the album's release take place in the real world, their impermanence suits the use of social media, where the campaign is documented and shared.

Artwork

The album's artwork features an image of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Release

The band released a 15-second music clip on Spotify on September 2, 2013, titled "9pm 9/9" under the album name Reflektor. On September 9, 2013, the band announced a last-minute secret show under the name "The Reflektors" at Montreal's Salsathèque Club, at 9PM for $9. Following the band's September 28 appearance on Saturday Night Live, a 30-minute concert special aired on NBC featuring cameos including Rainn Wilson, Bono, Ben Stiller, James Franco, Michael Cera and Zach Galifianakis. The band debuted three tracks, "Here Comes the Night Time", "We Exist" and "Normal Person". On October 12 the band released a teaser video containing thirty seconds of the song "Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)". On October 21, the song "Afterlife" was debuted in a music video, playing over edited clips of Marcel Camus's 1959 film Black Orpheus. On October 21, the song "Normal Person" aired on The Colbert Report. On October 24, a lyric video for the Official Reflektor Full Album Teaser, playing over longer clips of Marcel Camus's 1959 film Black Orpheus was posted to the band's Website. They made the subtle announcement on their Facebook Page.

Reception

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	81/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic
Billboard	(87)
Consequence of Sound
The Guardian
The Independent
Mojo
New Musical Express	(8/10)
The Observer
Pitchfork Media	(9.2/10)
Tiny Mix Tapes
Q
Rolling Stone
Slant Magazine
Los Angeles Times

Upon release, Reflektor was critically panned. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 81 based on 31 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim."

Rolling Stone gave the album a rating of four and a half stars out of five, and stated "It is also a perfect summary of their group's still-fervent indie-born hunger after a decade of mainstream success, and specifically, the decisive, indulgent ambition on Reflektor: a two-record, 75-minute set of 13 songs and the best album Arcade Fire have ever made". Pitchfork Media gave the album a 9.2 (the band's highest since their debut 'Funeral') - stating, "Reflektor is a triumph, but not a victory lap; the band never sounds content enough for that.""

USA Today gave three out of four stars and stated that on the album, "much of the music — audacious, heavily distorted and bubbling with electronics — sounds magnificently fresh. As the ensemble shape-shifts from the cleaner rock template of The Suburbs and Neon Bible to exotic beat-driven mashups, Arcade owes a debt to David Bowie (who has a brief cameo) and Achtung-era U2. Co-producer James Murphy of defunct LCD Soundsystem also brings his rhythmic chops to the mix in dizzying dance hybrids."

The Quietus notes that "the question of what comes next, though, isn't one that Arcade Fire need fear any longer. With Reflektor, they've answered it strongly. Four albums in, their sound glitters with many facets and possibilities – they can be proud of how it reflects on them."

Reflektor fails to "fully justify the size of it and it doesn't ever so much as unravel," according to Q. "While Reflektor isn't so flawed as to strip them of their sash, it's a wobble on the podium, a needless error of judgement that could have been easily avoided had they heeded that... old truism. Here is proof you really can have too much of a good thing,” reviewer Simon Goddard concluded, giving it a 3/5 rating.

Track listing

Disc one

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Reflektor" (contains a hidden pregap track, starting at -9:59)	7:34
2.	"We Exist"	5:44
3.	"Flashbulb Eyes"	2:42
4.	"Here Comes the Night Time"	6:31
5.	"Normal Person"	4:22
6.	"You Already Know"	3:59
7.	"Joan of Arc"	5:27

Disc two

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Here Comes the Night Time II"	2:52
2.	"Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice)"	6:14
3.	"It's Never Over (Hey Orpheus)"	6:43
4.	"Porno"	6:03
5.	"Afterlife"	5:53
6.	"Supersymmetry" (the song ends at 6:02 and then, after about five seconds of silence, goes into another hidden track)	11:17