"There’s sort of an everything-nowness to life. I feel like almost every event and everything that happens surrounds you on all sides. Some of it is fake and some of it is real and some of it is trying to sell you something and some of it is profound. Every moment of everything refracts into a thousand different things. It’s trying to capture some of the experiences of being alive now in all its flaws and all its glory.
"I remember being in a cafe once and I was overhearing this woman talking about watching The Sopranos and they had just finished watching The Sopranos, like they kind of binge-watched The Sopranos over a weekend. One of them was saying, “Oh, it’s so annoying that there’s no more Sopranos. I guess I’m gonna have to find something else to watch.” This was maybe six years ago–five years ago and it just hit me that this thing that took ten years to make someone watched in a weekend and was annoyed there wasn’t more. I was like whoa; I feel like culturally the moment and this kind of era that we’ve entered into of kind of everything-nowness has positive and negative sides to it but it’s definitely a new way of being."
Win Butler, The Independent
Even without the focus on the modern information overload, Canadian art-rocker sextet Arcade Fire's fourth album would have undoubtedly demanded significant brainpower from anyone attempting to wrap their head around it. The band's noteworthy marketing campaign for the album (which featured, among other things, a meta-review of their own album, their own version of Kylie and Kendall Jenner's 'vintage' T-shirt, USB fidget spinners, and a mock commercial for a 100% marshmallow breakfast cereal that “contains methylphenidate”) only made the line between their thematic critique of contemporary materialism and narcissism and their own reputation for aesthetic grandiosity and ambition harder to discern.
As many critics have pointed out, Everything Now (2017) truly shines when the band allow the urgency of human emotion to shine through this propensity for astute commentary and postmodern irony. "Electric Blue", which lets Régine Chassagne take over lead vocalist duties from her husband Win Butler, is undoubtedly one of the album's brightest moments. Her vocals take on that ethereal higher register that one associates with disco legends like the Bee Gees as she attempts to recover from (what appears to be) a destabilizing break-up: 'Summer's gone and so are you/ See the sky electrocute/ A thousand boys that look like you/ Cover my eyes electric blue'.
The track's stomping beat, sparkly synths, dazzling guitar lines and earworm-y chorus (a swarm of falsetto na-na-na-na-na-na-nas) makes for a hedonic dancefloor-friendly track that balances out the wistful melancholy in its lyrics. While the band have not issued a statement that links the track to the late David Bowie, the title could very well be a reference to his 1977 single "Sound and Vision". After all, the band have vowed to "continue to shout prayers into the atmosphere he created", out of profound aesthetic admiration and personal gratitude. Chassagne may hit the song's highest notes with the line 'I don't know how to sing your blues', but it is hard to imagine a more fitting tribute to his artistic legacy than this soaring, grief-tinted disco-inflected ode.
The accompanying music video, which features Chassagne dancing and strolling through the streets of New Orleans as city workers and garbage trucks clean up all the mess left behind by the Mardi Gras celebration, brilliantly evokes the song's pathos.
