We – Arcade Fire ★★★

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
2022	We	Arcade Fire	★★★	63	Rock	Chamber Pop

After the huge misstep that was Everything Now in 2017, We represents a return to form of sorts for Arcade Fire, one of the most acclaimed and triumphant musical acts of the past 20 years.

The band re-explores anthemic choruses, folk influenced personal moments and keeps in a few of the 80s pop elements they used on Reflektor as well. The more upbeat “The Lightning II” and the dark, drum-machine driven “Rabbit Hole” are standouts, as is the youthful “Unconditional I.” 

The ballads feel authentically ’80, and appropriately a bit dated, but work well enough. Win Butler gives off some old-dude energy at times, and lyrically the metaphors feel a little forced compared to the seemingly natural delivery from the old days, but the album’s fun, cute at times and energetic at others. 

Unfortunately, after the album was released, sexual assault allegations popped up against Win Butler. It’s easy to go cold turkey with some artists and just be done with them right away. Sometimes you can justify listening to old stuff that came out before the allegations but stop supporting their new efforts. And sometimes you just go into denial and can’t believe the allegations are true. 

Everyone approaches it differently, but the allegations here feel particularly like a betrayal, not only of fans, who he allegedly took advantage of, but his family and wife, Régine Chassagne, who are vital parts of the band. A lot of the joy that came from listening to Arcade Fire over the years was that they sounded like a family, the lovey dovey back and forths Win and Régine had on tender tracks, and that the messages in their music talked about youthful innocence and childhood imagery. 

Knowing that those family dynamics were either all for show, or that Win was going behind Régine’s back for much of that time he was singing about true love forces you to re-evaluate all their previous music, and is a real stain on the band’s legacy in my mind. I still love Funeral and Neon Bible and The Suburbs, and Reflektor (to an extent) but their charm has really taken a hit.