Albums to watch

Reflektor

Arcade Fire

Reflektor

Album No.4 from the Canadian indie rock band led by husband-and-wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, a double-LP release with James Murphy helping out regular collaborator Markus Dravs on production duties

ADM rating[?]

7.4

Label
Merge / Mercury
UK Release date
28/10/2013
US Release date
29/10/2013
  1. 9.5 |   Prefix

    There is so, so much content, so beautifully and flawlessly presented that it can be baffling at times
    Read Review

  2. 9.2 |   Pitchfork

    Reflektor unfolds over two discs, and which you prefer will depend on how many packets of earnest magnificence you take in your Arcade Fire. Disc 1 is raw and grounded; Disc 2 is airier, more cosmic, and a little less self-aware
    Read Review

  3. 9.1 |   Pretty Much Amazing

    This is music that moves the body along with the spirit, a damn fine step in the right direction
    Read Review

  4. 9.0 |   Consequence Of Sound

    Four for four
    Read Review

  5. 9.0 |   Rolling Stone

    A thrilling act of risk and renewal by a band with established commercial appeal and a greater fear of the average
    Read Review

  6. 9.0 |   The Line Of Best Fit

    If The Suburbs gave us solidarity in our little agonies, then this follow-up gives us a delusional cult to follow into the darkness
    Read Review

  7. 9.0 |   Slant Magazine

    The band certainly hasn't left rock behind, but they've found a way to push beyond a sense of exhaustion with the resources that the genre has to offer, while at the same time reflecting on the tenuousness of interpersonal connection in an age of hyper-evolving technology
    Read Review

  8. 8.7 |   Billboard

    This is still an Arcade Fire album through and through - just injected with heavy dance grooves, so that it sounds like a new-millennium response to the Talking Heads' landmark, Brian Eno-produced album, "Remain In Light"
    Read Review

  9. 8.5 |   The 405

    Reflektor is an album to be devoured several times over
    Read Review

  10. 8.5 |   The Quietus

    Four albums in, their sound glitters with many facets and possibilities – they can be proud of how it reflects on them
    Read Review

  11. 8.0 |   Sputnik Music (staff)

    There are enough interesting motifs and musical adventuring on Reflektor that the negatives seem inconsequential on the whole. Is it the perfect album fans have been waiting for since Funeral? No, and Arcade Fire will probably never make a perfect record
    Read Review

  12. 8.0 |   Evening Standard

    It’s overlong, but worth the time investment
    Read Review

  13. 8.0 |   Independent on Sunday

    Big only because Arcade Fire think big, Reflektor stretches stadium rock’s reach in the acts of self-reinvention and revitalisation. Now that’s entertainment
    Read Review

  14. 8.0 |   The Observer

    This should all make for an astonishing album, an opus of 2013. Since every track outstays its welcome by a couple of minutes it makes for a merely very, very good one instead
    Read Review

  15. 8.0 |   Spin

    Reflektor is long and weird and indulgent and deeply committed. It has three to five genuinely great songs; it also wanders off into the filler hinterlands for 20 minutes or so (out of 70)
    Read Review

  16. 8.0 |   NME

    Cleaner, sharper and dancier than anything the band have done before
    Read Review

  17. 8.0 |   State

    Arcade Fire’s most ambitious, daring and downright danceable collection yet
    Read Review

  18. 8.0 |   DIY

    This is the new, rejuvenated Arcade Fire; past thrown to one side, only eyes ahead. Here's to the future
    Read Review

  19. 8.0 |   Time Out

    If 2010’s ‘The Suburbs’ lyrically captured the emotions of coming home, ‘Reflektor’ looks out of the band’s double glazed windows and into our impending future, Win Butler’s vocals often detached as if he were the messenger of an omen
    Read Review

  20. 8.0 |   Daily Telegraph

    It is exhaustingly, daringly, bafflingly brilliant, but you might want to lie down in a dark room after listening
    Read Review

  21. 8.0 |   The Fly

    While it’s too long – so long, in fact, that you’ll forget your own name and nationality – its scale immerses you entirely in Arcade Fire’s universe
    Read Review

  22. 8.0 |   Mojo

    An act of rejuvenation few at their level manage with conviction. Print edition only

  23. 8.0 |   The Independent

    It's a brave and sometimes baffling album, broaching difficult themes
    Read Review

  24. 8.0 |   The Digital Fix

    Some people seem to think it’s too long but I rather like it
    Read Review

  25. 7.5 |   A.V. Club

    Listen closely enough to Reflektor—and give it the patience that clearly went into its recording—and that old Arcade Fire burns. It’s just a different kind of flame
    Read Review

  26. 7.2 |   Paste Magazine

    Yes, Reflektor is very well an intellectual triumph, but—in a first for this band—it’s almost never an emotional one
    Read Review

  27. 7.0 |   FasterLouder

    Reflektor is the sound of a few goofballs throwing themselves a well-deserved party, present are the requisite anxieties that go hand in hand with playing host
    Read Review

  28. 7.0 |   No Ripcord

    Rock n’ roll is still in a worrying state, and they’re just as unsure about whether or not it’s a viable course to take in the future. But if any one act is worth betting for its sustainability it's Arcade Fire
    Read Review

  29. 7.0 |   Fact

    The sound of an act who, almost uniformly across the album, and for the first time in their careers, are playing as a band. Instead of simply throwing 10 instruments into the mix in service to some hurtling expansion
    Read Review

  30. 7.0 |   musicOMH

    Reflektor is an artistic gamble from Arcade Fire; a bold statement from a band less intent on competing with their contemporaries and who, instead, focus on doing what they want to do, which this time round seems to be to dance
    Read Review

  31. 7.0 |   All Music

    As fascinating as it is frustrating, an oddly compelling miasma of big pop moments and empty sonic vistas that offers up a (full-size) snapshot of a band at its commerical peak, trying to establish eye contact from atop a mountain
    Read Review

  32. 7.0 |   Loud And Quiet

    At eighty minutes, it’s firmly in that often-dodgy double-album territory, but the band’s seal rings though this opus in every note
    Read Review

  33. 7.0 |   Uncut

    While the overall sound is massive, it's become somewhat restricted in tone and texture, most tracks careering towards climaxes of cacophonous synth whines and heavy rock guitars, a narrower palette than on previous albums
    Read Review

  34. 6.5 |   Under The Radar

    It's wildly uneven, and contains more flat-out bellyflops than any of the band's previous works; it's also endlessly fascinating. Far from perfect, it's worthy of heavy exploration
    Read Review

  35. 6.0 |   PopMatters

    Catchy excitement and impressive pop rock which slowly rolls downhill into the murky sonic depths of the more somber second half without any truly punctuating final moment of the record itself
    Read Review

  36. 6.0 |   Q

    It's a wobble on a podium, a needless error of judgement that could have been easily avoided. Print edition only

  37. 6.0 |   The Irish Times

    An enjoyable, if unnecessarily overlong, progression
    Read Review

  38. 6.0 |   The Guardian

    It sounds like the work of a band that have plenty of good ideas, but increasingly can't tell them from their bad ones – or won't be told
    Read Review

  39. 6.0 |   Entertainment.ie

    Clocking in at over 75 minutes, Reflektor is overlong but doesn't necessarily overstay its welcome - it just serves to highlight the length of time between the album's sparse highlights
    Read Review

  40. 4.0 |   The Skinny

    Here’s a band at play, but making music that is never really playful enough to charm, thrill, and engage in the way only they knew how
    Read Review

  41. 4.0 |   Clash

    Undercooked electronics, impotent rhetoric, too-familiar crescendo-ing structures and an overall feeling that this needs further post-production attention render Reflektor an entirely substandard album
    Read Review

  42. 4.0 |   Drowned In Sound

    It’s hard to figure out why Reflektor has turned out such a disappointing mess
    Read Review

  43. 3.0 |   God Is In The TV

    Arcade Fire are a big glittery alt. rock name, who appear to have run out of steam
    Read Review


blog comments powered by Disqus

Watch it

Roll over video for more options

Hear it

Preview & download it

Arcade Fire: Reflektor

  • Download full album for just £5.49
  • 1. Reflektor £0.99
  • 2. We Exist £0.99
  • 3. Flashbulb Eyes £0.99
  • 4. Here Comes The Night Time £0.99
  • 5. Normal Person £0.99
  • 6. You Already Know £0.99
  • 7. Joan Of Arc £0.99
  • 8. Here Comes The Night Time II £0.99
  • 9. Awful Sound (Oh Eurydice) £0.99
  • 10. It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus) £0.99
  • 11. Porno £0.99
  • 12. Afterlife £0.99
  • 13. Supersymmetry N/A
  • Service provided by 7Digital

Latest Reviews

More reviews