The Talkhouse facilitates reviews by musicians of newly released albums, and the latest installment sees the wonderful St. Vincent giving an unconventional “review” of Arcade Fire’s Reflektor. Instead of writing your run-of-the-mill essay on why she liked or disliked the album, Annie Clark decided to Google some of the things that caught her attention during her listen. For example, this is what happened when she Googled “porno”:
Nothing about the song from Reflektor, as far as I can tell. But there is something called “sploshing” that is FASCINATING!
After a few more searches on such topics as Madonna and “very-tall-men-fronted rock bands,” Ms. Clark gives her verdict on Arcade Fire’s new album, and comes to a very positive conclusion:
The Arcade Fire have released an album that elucidates our constant psychic vacillation between uber-connection and utter disconnection. They ask you to be aware of your fractured attention span/psyche/in touch with your humanity. Arcade Fire so mercifully avoid the Nuremberg-rock cliches (“Hey!”) in favor of sleaze, anxiety, and pathos that you can dance to. Reflektor is an utterly 2013 record that asks the existential questions “Where are we now?” and, more importantly, “Where are we going?”
In the words of Joe Strummer, “Straight to hell, boys.”
Read the rest of her entertaining Google search results here, and revisit Ezra Koenig’s thoughts on Drake’s Nothing Was The Same.
