Is This Arcade Fire’s “Reflektor” Art & Lyrics?
Here’s what we know: There’s a new Arcade Fire album, titled Reflektor, out 10/29 on Merge. James Murphy produced at least part of it. On Monday — 9/9 — at 9PM, the band will release their new single, also titled “Reflektor,” as well as a video from director Anton Corbijn. All of this is awesome news, but the band has deliberately left everything else in the shadows. So: On to the rumors!
As Pitchfork points out, various independent record stores have posted notices about a coming “Reflektor” 12″ single. A map on thereflektors.com seems to point to locations where the single might be available. An English record store called Empire Records claims that the single is actually a 14-track 12″, which pretty much sounds like an album, and you can see the “tracks” — or are they lyrics? note the rhymes… — below. Apparently, though the “Reflektor” single is actually a 45.
Also, the Main reports that the band played a secret show at a Montreal salsa club called Salsathèque on Wednesday night. Let’s take a minute to visualize what a salsa club in Montreal would even be like, and then let’s read the description:
The show was unexpectedly dance-oriented, due to the upbeat rhythms of conga drums and electronic flourishes alongside their most poppy sounds. Although the song lyrics shared the same themes as past releases, they traded their somber orchestral sound for something more contemporary…
The standout track featured various musical directions and sudden tempo changes, sandwiched between the boisterous repeated choruses of “Here comes the night”. Imagine the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”, but if David Bowie had written it while on vacation.
As awesome as that sounds, though, we can’t be entirely certain that it actually took place. Though cell phones were reportedly banned, it seems hard to believe that this would happen without some renegade crowd member getting off a blurry Instragram shot, or without more Twitter chatter immediately afterward. Still, we can hope.