As we overcome the disappointment in the pile of caca that the Pixies released as their first EP in 20 years, another critical darling, a bit closer to their prime, dropped some new music that actually lives up to our expectations. On September 9, Arcade Fire released their new single, "Reflektor," accompanied by two music videos. As always, the Montreal band had one foot in the past and another in the future.
The past is in black and white, and the clip looks like it could have been on MTV when the station ran videos. Probably because it's directed by Anton Corbijn, who did many of the old U2 and Depeche Mode videos. The future is the second video, which was directed by Vincent Morisset, which allows viewers to manipulate the images on their smart phone or dumb computer, but only if annoyingly using Google Chrome (check it here).
See also: The Pixies' New Song "Bagboy" Sounds Like Weezer
And as for the song itself? It sounds like Arcade Fire had been influenced by oh-so-danceable LCD Soundsystem. And they have. The producer of "Reflektor" and the rest of Arcade Fire's forthcoming album (due to drop in October) is none other than James Murphy. And staying with the theme of keeping one foot in the past, the song has a special guest star providing backing vocals: David Bowie.
Since Arcade Fire is one of the last of its breed to treat a song as part of a whole, we will have to wait and see how "Reflektor" fits with the rest of the album, but the first song's electronic beat is certainly a stylistic change akin to Radiohead going from OK Computer to Kid A.
Other news to excite Arcade Fire's fans includes the band appearing as the musical guest on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live on September 28 and the fact that they scored Spike Jonze's new sci-fi movie, Her, scheduled to come out November 20.
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