2017 Arcade Fire LP

win butler ✔ @DJWindows98
Hey guys. Taking an extended break from this thing, will miss the opinions and the 1 liners :)))) talk later when I got something to say 🌐
3:00 PM - Aug 7, 2017

Yeah, I've been worrying how this band will take a backlash... They've had one coming for a while now, and even if I like Everything Now more and more, it's a weird album and they fucked up the rollout severely. I'm not sure I see them course correcting gracefully.

I get that Win is becoming more and more punch worthy, and people want to take it down, but focusing the critique on him has the unfortunate side effect of belittling what the rest of the band, including Regine, is contributing to the music.

Nobody actually commits suicide to Funeral, btw.

I forgot that Reflektor got a fucking 9.2 on p4k. I would've guessed the backlash would've happened in 2013.

& focus on Win over other band members is obviously because of the lyrics, which appear to be the most loathsome aspect of this record for a lot of people, other than the bad/boring songs. So even if he had co-writers in the band, he bears the brunt as the lead singer.

It's kinda too simple to say he is the lead singer. Regine also sings lead on a song, and joins him on several songs, including Signs of Life. It still diminishes her contributions.

I really like Reflektor, but yeah, 9.2 is ridiculous, and something that invites course correction.

If you sing lead on every single song except for one, you're the lead singer. Does Regine write the lyrics for the songs that she sings backup on? Do they co-write their lyrics? I genuinely don't know. If Win sings lead & writes lyrics on his own, he's the lead singer.

the album review for the new one is the only negative notice i've ever seen them get on PF. they're still posting a new AF story every day.

watch: Win Butler taste tests pasta sauces
Arcade Fire releases cover of Father John Misty song
Arcade Fire announces new line of band member papier mâché head Halloween masks

x-post: Afaict lyrics are credited to the entire band. And I'm not saying he is not an asshole - his behaviour during Here Comes the Nightime at the live show I saw a month ago was off-putting, as I've mentioned a couple of times - but the case of who is saying what is really complicated. And has kinda always been so with this band. In fact, I'd say that's one of the things people probably liked, how much 'we' there always was on earlier albums. And still is, but it is getting a bit different as they're getting older and older, and also still singing about 'boys' and 'girls' and 'kids'.

x-post: Afaict lyrics are credited to the entire band.

but do you think all 27 members of Arcade Fire actually contribute to the lyrics. maybe Win & Regine do. but the way he talks about it, seems like Win writes his songs.

To the earlier conversation about major label signing, notice that Win's smell you later tweet even has a brand logo in it. All this meta layer stuff, if true, is going to be lost on people because AF lack the nuance to pull it off.

The Arcade Fire backlash began circa Neon Bible, and it was hardly surprising.

Their career trajectory: an overhyped debut that has maybe 4 passable songs on it, followed by an immense dud with one good song on it that also happened to be an old song, followed by 10 years of tripe.

'member when Ned posted the Scritti Politti guy's evisceration of AF, almost 10yrs ago? prescient

Sure wish I remembered that.

Neon Bible is their best album imo

yeah i agree, neon bible has held up a lot better than funeral (maybe because its songs haven't been licensed and ripped off as endlessly as those on funeral). i listened to it for the first time in years the other day - it's great, and while the whole anti-organized religion thing seems so dorky and try-hard now, it was still relatively unusual in early 2007 at the end of the GWB administration. "Intervention" is one of their best songs. I always had a soft spot for the title track, too - maybe their most simple song, imo their most beautiful.

perhaps there was indie backlash against them, but The Suburbs won fucking Album of the Year at the Grammy's in 2011. that was really shocking. and yeah, as discussed above, Reflektor got really good reviews for some reason.

wtf is up with "everything now" sneaking into the NB tracklist on Spotify

just crunched the numbers on this, that is not allowed

I've never seen any backlash except via ilx and among small groups of similarly minded folks. Until now.

looking forward to never having to hear about this band again tbh

Too bad. If something sucks ILX is more likely to talk about it.

they're also one of like a dozen arena rock bands that formed after 2000

The Suburbs won fucking Album of the Year at the Grammy's in 2011.

Unfortunately, by the time that 2011 rolled around, stuff like this meant sweet FA.

In fact, by the time 2011 rolled around, "indie" music in general meant sweet FA, its popularity having died crushed by a landfill circa the release of Kings of Leon's 'Sex on Fire' ... in the '10s, only a small handful of already existing (or reformed) "indie" bands have put out decent work. Newer "indie" bands have pretty much had it from the get-go.

what is 'sweet FA'

sweet failure analysis

Fanny Adams (30 April 1859 – 24 August 1867) was a young English girl murdered by solicitor's clerk Frederick Baker in Alton, Hampshire. The expression "sweet Fanny Adams", or "sweet FA", refers to her and has come, through British naval slang, to mean "nothing at all".

In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it, and suggested it might be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams. "Fanny Adams" became slang for mutton[6] or stew and then for anything worthless – from which comes the current use of "sweet Fanny Adams" (or just "sweet F.A.") to mean "nothing at all". It can be seen as a euphemism for "fuck all" – which means the same. The large tins the mutton was delivered in were reused as mess tins. Mess tins or cooking pots are still known as Fannys.[citation needed]

in other words, Turrican, a little "too soon" maybe

guys, if you found the album cycle offputting and the music not to compensate, I regret to inform you that you, my tiny child, have merely ~misunderstood the art~ http://www.vulture.com/2017/09/arcade-fires-win-butler-on-everything-now-album-rollout.html

(were there this many people during the Reagan and/or Bush years suggesting less-than-glowing reviews of their record sprung from The Forces That Elected Not My President?)

(by "this many" I suppose I mean "also any" but I suspect we're going to see more of this rhetorical move in the next three-to-seven years)

What a dumb interview (his answers, not the questions). So full of himself. What is the point of proving that if you intentionally spread misinformation about your band and music people will believe or further spread said misinformation?

That said, their plan might have worked had a) the music indeed resonated and b) had they followed it up with some sort of full-U2 Zoo TV tour spectacle. Maybe there's still time for that, but grouchy Win "you don't get it, maaaan" interviews aren't helping things.

His lecture tour with Darren Aronofsky'll be great.

"Bad On Purpose: The Made-You-Think/Mission Accomplished" Tour.

Lol Ned.

His answers are embarrassing.

Haha Josh

Easily my favorite bit is the "Well the FRENCH got us!"

my least favorite bit is the way it throws out generalities about how broken music journalism is and how toxic the political climate is, things designed to make people nod along (particularly music journalists, perpetually looking for something, anything, anyone, to validate their despair at their earning potential), and uses those generalities to sneak through some real bullshit undetected. the dress code thing is a good example. the way Butler talks about it, you'd think the story was completely manufactured. (by the town of Macedonian teenagers who weren't good enough at fake news to reach the Trump leagues?) but it wasn't -- there was, in fact, an email requesting exactly what was reported. the guidelines, furthermore, are pretty much standard for anything that's going to be filmed -- logos have to be blurred out in post, solid white and red tend to film poorly -- but "look, this is how TV production works" is quite a different statement from "this email that clearly exists doesn't exist, how dare you report on it."

of course,

given he's outright said it there's a decent chance the postmortem interview will get a subsequent postzombie interview in which he says "hahaha, you journalists were fooled into being irritated by my deliberately irritating statements, gotcha!"

(this isn't just limited to arcade fire, obviously -- a side effect of aforementioned journalism climate is that PRs now have a fantastic strategy of calling anything that deviates from their manufactured narrative "fake news"). doesn't help that the most visible people who are the most visibly "skeptical" are right-wing cranks

He comes across as being lost in 2017 imo. In understandable despair about fake news and such, but shooting from the hip entirely with an ill advised campaign.

Stuff like this:

The other part of it is that when you make a record in this modern context, it instantly gets refracted in the media. There’s all this side content, this trail that follows everything. So we thought that maybe we’d just make all that content, as opposed to just making the art. That stuff was going to get made anyway, so why not make it ourselves?

And this:

we just wanted to see where fake-news articles about the band would go. The media is built for clicks now, and we were trying to see firsthand how it all works.

And this:

So it was really interesting to us to see what got picked up about Arcade Fire. That idea plays into what we were doing as well: We were providing the ammunition for people who wanted to write negative things about the band: Here you go! Here’s something to be outraged about!

seems like despairing cluelessness and, quite frankly, it's cynical. Which he categorically denies, saying it's maybe their most "earnest" record or whatever. And then we're back at the beginning, that the roll-out was a complete mismatch with what they are trying to express. But no, we didn't get it. Except the French. And Europe. Which is bogus btw.

Also, Katherine otm.

He's such a dick.

Also, as i said on facebook about this: perhaps next time spend less time "creating" "side content" and more time writing lyrics that aren't awful.

ah yes, France, an oasis of reason and kindness, where one-third of the populace did not vote for a far-right-wing demagogue

Maybe the lyrics were bad on purpose. Everything about that? And you fell for them! Sucker.

I call this the Frank Zappa defense. Oh, you thought the music was brilliant? Well it was a piss take, and you fell for it. Oh, you thought the music was terrible? Well, it was terrible on purpose, and you fell for it!

haha, that should be ever think, not everything. Stupid phone. Now I know exactly how Trump feels.

infinite content, we're infinitely covfefe

Oh Will, you asshole you're tarnishing whatever good songs the band previously had with that attitude. He's turning into indie BIlly Corgan.

shocking that a guy who hadn't lost a parent or lover or sibling but named his debut album funeral anyways would eventually be revealed as tone-deaf cluebag