I didn’t much care for Arcade Fire’s last album, 2017’s Everything Now, a dreary experiment that idled around in spoken word and “infinite content.” But let’s not dwell on that when there’s “The Lightning I, II,” a full-throated, table-clearing reset from the band’s forthcoming album WE. Produced by Nigel Godrich alongside founding members and lead singers Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the seven-song, 40-minute record is conceptually split into two halves: The first—called “I”—concerns our personal anxieties, while the second—called “WE”—concerns community and art and love and what we can all accomplish together. Now, Arcade Fire have never sounded great on paper—they’re an indie rock collective who dress like thrift-store vagabonds and one of them plays the hurdy-gurdy!—but “The Lightning I, II” is the sound of a great Arcade Fire song, one that makes the band come alive for the first time in years.
It appears on the second half of WE, the everybody-together side, a mode that this band have always excelled in. What begins like an introductory hymn revs up into their most heart-racing tempo since “Month of May” over a decade ago. The clammy synth-disco of the previous two albums is replaced by drum sticks hitting drum heads and Chassagne’s bright piano, stretching the sound of the band back to its full width. Most blessedly, there is some actual and wonderful singing from Butler and Chassagne about never quitting on each other and waiting for light and the lightning—big broad things about which to feel things broadly. There’s a sense that after Arcade Fire steered away from shout-choruses and earnest sing-a-longs—those musty relics of aughts indie rock—they’ve found their way back home, sounding fearless and genuine once again.
