Everything, except a score over [5.00].
[Video][Website]
[4.77]
Ian Mathers: If you asked me to guess what Arcade Fire coproduced by half of Daft Punk and the bassist from Pulp sounded like, never would I in a million years have picked something nearly as close to the overstuffed, awkward but goodhearted, clumsily soaring post-“big music” rock epics of my late-80s/early 90s childhood. It feels like I should be listening to this between, I don’t know, Crowded House and Midnight Oil records (despite sounding nothing like either), or on the radio between embarrassingly Rattle and Hum era U2 and Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is” or something. And that’s down to the clearly Branding(TM) related point they’re trying to make in the video (probably the album) as a whole. Perversely enough, it’s the most I’ve enjoyed listening to them in a while.
[6]
Thomas Inskeep: The brilliant Laura Snapes on the brilliant Unbreak My Chart podcast: “I hate this band. I think they are pompous, and pretentious … They so often mistake saying something about what it means to be human for actually saying something human. All of their songs are very ‘Oooh, make you think! We’re so clever!'” Me: SAME. She adds that “Everything Now” is a guilty pleasure for her, because she likes the song in spite of her intense dislike of the band. I feel no such guilt because I feel no such pleasure. This is the sound of a bunch of holier-than-thou-fucks going “Look! We can make pop music, wink wink!” Except that they refuse to go all the way and are just putting on airs. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, and it’s not very good at all.
[2]
Alex Clifton: The first time I heard this, I was overjoyed; the second and third times, less so. It’s like Neon Bible and Reflektor had an anti-capitalist disco baby, which is definitely not a bad thing. The lyrics, however, feel a bit on-the-nose: “I pledge allegiance to everything now” definitely marries the concepts of consumerism and nationalism, but it sounds stupid said aloud. With this single pointing to an album about consumerism, technology, isolation & instant gratification, I’m looking forward to seeing this track in context, but I wanted more for a first single.
[4]
Claire Biddles: Ten massive points to the intro that sounds like a 70s wedding band covering Steps, but the rest of this is very laborious. Intellectually speaking it’s quite neat for Arcade Fire to conceptualise the trope of the try-hard indie anthem that they helped to invent. Down to its title, “Everything Now” is so inherently maximalist and desperate to make festival-goers cry that it becomes knowing pastiche, like the “Love Love Peace Peace” of 00s indie rock. Once the pan flutes come in after the first chorus I’m certain they must know what they’re doing. But I’m a sentimentalist, and analytical exercises in niche musical styles are never as good as the earnest, well-intentioned classics that they’re intellectualising.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: I don’t think I’ve ever felt so actively embarrassed for a “serious” band before in my life. I mean, any rock band from the 80s would have been crucified for this.
[3]
Ryo Miyauchi: Win Butler tackles The Future less gracefully than expected, leaving less a message than pure commentary. Had this been written in the “this world is bullshit!”-era of Reflektor, the brightly galloping piano line would’ve been an unfortunate vehicle to deliver a not-so-glamorous snark; an otherwise poignant line in 2017, “’til every room in my house is filled with shit I couldn’t live without” had been sung as a more antagonistic lyric. Though it’s still hard to tell whether or not he’s more at peace, “Everything Now” came as bit of a surprise.
[6]
Micha Cavaseno: This pierces through charmless glitch electronica to go to the sound of a bad Bryan Ferry impression over someone who thinks ABBA was good ‘in spite of themselves’ and has to attempt weird FX piercing through every other moment to point to the artiness of ones’ ambition. Arcade Fire’s worst aspect is that they have everything in them to make anthems that are dull but have great follow through, yet they insist on displaying a self-reflexivity and neuroticism against their sense of pop. Shame is an ugly tic to force into your creations.
[5]
Austin Brown: Musically, so much more effusive and openhearted than anything off of Reflektor; lyrically so much more tight-assed.
[5]
Hannah Jocelyn: There are certain moments of “Everything Now” that make me outright adore it: the upfront, confident acoustic guitar in the first verse, the intense Owen Pallett-arranged strings at around 2:45, “every room in my house is filled with shit I couldn’t live without.” But then there’s the unnecessary crowd screaming, the buried but somehow still OTT choir, and the pennywhistle. That’s probably the point of this song (“let’s write a tune that makes fun of excess while being excessive ’cause we’re clever like that”), but even the moments that work are obscured by the haughtiness and bad taste of some other part (“we need to include a verse about how families are torn apart purely by the eeeevils of technology”). Yet as the day goes on, the lower my blood sugar is, the less my guard is up, the more I totally fall for it. “Everything Now” starts to feel like an acceptance of the Infinite Content age, rather than an indictment or even a celebration. This is the way it’s gonna be, the news will just get faster, and we’re not going back to whatever we were before, so we might as well try to exist within it rather than rally against it. My wistful train of thought is soon interrupted by that incessant goddamn pennywhistle.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: Unthreatening, bland and weak drums. Come on, bruh.
[2]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Call me shallow but the fact that “Everything Now” samples and is a direct response to Francis Bebey’s “The Coffee Cola Song” really softened me to its message. I can easily admit to my own overconsumption of stuff, but hearing someone tell me exactly that can leave me peeved. Which is why Win Butler’s own admittance keeps this from sounding snobbish or didactic. Even better, it prevents the song from feeling utterly hopeless (the light disco arrangement helps too). The half-serious “And every room in my house is filled with shit I couldn’t live without” is cutting but this is a song that asks more for acknowledgement than action. And that is, if anything, the biggest evidence that “Everything Now” is capturing any sort of zeitgeist.
[8]
Katherine St Asaph: The musical correlative, I guess, is every song off the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at once. Not the worst of prospects, but the soundtrack had actual singers.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Arcade Fire going “Dancing Queen” isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, even if Win Butler’s idea of mirrorball moves is to cough worried phlegm.
[5]