Maybe Not “Everything Now” (but Arcade Fire’s Album Isn’t That Bad)

Holy Cow, Arcade Fire's 'Everything Now' Isn't The Ishtar of Albums

In music criticism, we LOVE eating our darlings alive whenever they misstep.

And boy oh boy did the popular press savage the new Arcade Fire album:

Pitchfork rated Everything Now at a 5.6

Spin said Arcade Fire should just “log out”

The Ringer says it’s content “feels infinite” (and not in a good way)

You would think AF killed a beloved internet animal or were nice to the Kardashian's (or made jokes about the internet making us cruel).

By the way, I love David Bowie, believe it or not, not all of his albums were great either.

To keep it 100, I never loved Arcade Fire, in my opinion, they are an earnest but messy jam band without the same level of musical talent as many other bands in the jam genre (and I am a punk guy, so it pains me to say that).

Anyway, I never loved Arcade Fire, but I never hated or even disliked them either (full disclosure, I own all of their albums, but I also own all of many other bands albums too). I was never in love with them, but I am certainly in like.

Is “Anything Now” a great album? No, it is not.

Is “Anything Now” a good album? Sure, why not, I would consider it better than the vast majority of the waste major labels try to pretend are diamonds (at least Arcade Fire is trying to examine new musical territory).

At least they are being adventurous and at times playful, earnestness is really hard to maintain (see U2).

‘Everything Now’ is a pretty good song (I even tapped my toes a bit)

‘Signs of Life’ is a fair-to-middling song.

‘Creature Comforts’ is a really good song (depending on how you interpret the message) and, obviously, the one I chose to include on my weekly playlist. In my opinion, they are including themselves and their friends in the criticism (not delivering it as if from above).

‘Peter Pan,’ ‘Chemistry,’ and ‘Infinite Content’ are not so good.

‘Electric Blue’ is a pretty good song.

‘Good God Damn’ is way too derivative to be good.

‘Put Your Money On Me’ is not so good.

‘We Don’t Deserve Love’ is unmemorable.

‘Everything Now’ the reprieve is fine but less interesting than the original version.

Four okay songs make it not a terrible album, I get that expectations might have been high, but I am not sure it is worthy of a review that asked them to “log off.”

I dunno, give it a chance, who knows, you might enjoy it a little (certainly not the worst album that I have even heard today).

Anyway, Creature Comforts is on the playlist below (which is one of my favorites in recent memory).

The Endless Creature Groove Spotify Playlist

Every week I put out a new curated playlist for your listening enjoyment.

You can "Just Hit Play" now and throughout the week, there will be new entries about the bands and songs on the playlist.