Arcade Fire’s Pink Elephant review: Win Butler’s awkward return falls flat
This Canadian indie rock act built its reputation on the catharsis and celebration of massed vocals and anthemic arrangements, but its slow creative decline continues apace on album No.7.
Album reviews for week of May 17 2025:
ALTERNATIVE ROCK
Pink Elephant
Arcade Fire
Sony
I’m not 100 per cent sure what colour it is, but everyone knows there’s an elephant in the room. This is the first Arcade Fire album since a 2022 Pitchfork story published allegations by a number of young women about a pattern of sexual misconduct involving frontman Win Butler. He admitted his failings and offered an apology, while insisting all the relationships were consensual. So in lieu of the artist submitting to interviews, it makes sense that everyone will instead be picking over these new songs for clues. “Take your mind off me!” Butler exclaims on the title track, which is a bit like that old trick of telling someone not to think of a pink elephant. Of course, from that moment that’s all they can think about. On the next track, Year Of The Snake, over woozy electric guitar, Butler’s wife, Regine Chassagne, sings. “It’s the time of the season when you think about leaving – I knew that you would.” Butler replies, “I tried to be good, but I’m a real boy, my heart’s full of love, it’s not made out of wood.” Yeah, you could say there’s some airing of dirty laundry going on here. And you could also say that Butler doesn’t come across as too sympathetic in the process. Stop trying to play a game of Where’s The Mea Culpa? and Pink Elephant often sounds stilted and inconsequential. Formed in Montreal in 2001, Arcade Fire built its reputation on the catharsis and celebration of massed vocals and anthemic instrumentation, especially on its emotional 2004 debut Funeral, which was inspired by the deaths of family members.
The band inevitably started to sound bigger and more streamlined as it blew up, and did it successfully on 2007’s Neon Bible and 2010’s The Suburbs, then went into a slow creative decline, reaching a nadir on the meta sociopolitical blah-dom of Everything Now in 2017 and its so-so follow-up, 2022’s We. With Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan) in the co-producer’s chair, Pink Elephant does appear to be an attempt to strip things back sonically. Circle of Trust and Ride or Die are two of the better moments, the former grooving on a disco beat and fat, fluid bass line, as Butler and Chassagne sing in unison about dancefloors and relationships (joining everyone from Billy Idol to Robyn in the process); the latter a gently insistent beat and a simple acoustic guitar line Butler echoes with lines such as “I can take you anywhere, wind is blowing back your hair, I can work an office job, you can be a waitress”. But three of these 10 tracks are short, gauzy instrumentals, and songs such as Alien Nation and I Love Her Shadow awkwardly adapt techno-pop, robotic vocals and jarring keyboards. On closing track Stuck In My Head there’s finally a rush of blood to the head, a thudding bass line fuelling a song where Butler sounds like he’s admitting his life is a mess. “Clean up your heart!” he yelps. Perhaps in those four words he’s finally addressing himself, and the elephant in the room. But too little, too late.
Barry Divola
JAZZ
Like A Charm
The Subterraneans
Ripper Recordings
Like a Charm is built around the virtuosity of veterans James Ryan (tenor saxophone) and Steve Hunter (electric bass), but the two are amply supported by Michael Coggins (guitar) and Jack Powell (drums) — musicians who are certainly in a similar class. Hunter, whose distinctive sound is instantly recognisable in Australian jazz, plays so brilliantly that even at lightning speed, his notes are as clear as a bell. Overall this album is high-energy stuff but I warm to the measured pace of the music, whereby the musicians often play agreeably within themselves, before opening out with blistering, exciting solos. Two guests add quality to the album: Pat Powell, whose great vocal sound is exemplified in an off-the-cuff improvisation in the opening track; and trombonist Dan Barnett, who plays on two of his own compositions, providing not only a biting sound in the written themes, but also star quality as an improviser. Otherwise three tracks are composed by Ryan, and one by Hunter. This is jazz/funk played at the highest level by four musicians who completely understand the genre.
Eric Myers
HEAVY METAL
Nu Delhi
Bloodywood
Fearless/Concord
With the emergence of Bloodywood, we see a powerful fusion of culture and heavy metal music that proves to be as insatiably entertaining as it is fiercely intelligent in both crafting and delivery. Self-described as “Indian folk metal” and initially formed in 2016 as a parody band, it cultivated online popularity before taking itself more seriously from 2019 onward. Debut album Rakshak (2022) was innovative and conscious; it fused metal and traditional soundscapes with lyricism that tackled social and political topics close to the core trio. Second album Nu Delhi is a love letter to the music of their culture and their home; here, Delhi is positioned as a vibrant melting pot of sound and scope. Tadka is a clear highlight, while the crushing nature of Hutt and Kismat will make Nu Delhi a memorable introduction to Bloodywood and its vision. A prime collaboration with Japanese kawaii-metal superstars Babymetal (Bekhauf) brings together two excellent approaches to the genre, while also serving a poignant reminder of how much fun heavy music can be when artists are unafraid to take risks and push boundaries.
Sosefina Fuamoli
ROOTS
Bird In Paradise
The Cat Empire
BMG Australia
Building off jazz roots set down two decades ago, The Cat Empire has carved for itself a unique place within Australian music over the ensuing time by extending its sonic reach into Cuban-inspired, foot-tapping, flat-out roots territories, often melding any and all in an effort to create something new, something exciting. Its 10th album, Bird In Paradise, is no exception; the band this time looks to contemporary flamenco as the foundation from which it has erected this 10-track romp, at the same time returning to its bedrock by assembling the album in the same room, all together in organic fashion. The results are, as one would expect, mostly solid. The title track, which begins proceedings, does come across as a little chaotic, as if the band was looking to create a single snapshot of the whole record in one almost breathless cut, but from there — via the smoky and evocative Blood on the Stage; the old school dance feel of La Gracia; and the powerful-yet-playful closer Blackout Blues, where Felix Riebl’s vocal delivery is interestingly reminiscent of Clutch’s Neil Fallon — the band eases back and narrows its scope, creating an album which sits nicely within an eclectic canon.
Samuel J. Fell
ALTERNATIVE ROCK
Is
My Morning Jacket
ATO Records
My Morning Jacket seemed like an anomaly when it first emerged more than 25 years ago: long-haired Kentucky dudes who wore Southern rock and guitar heroics on their sleeves, yet were embraced by the indie rock fraternity because they also offered a mix of weird, earnest and transcendent. Ten albums in, the quintet has decided to use an outside producer for the first time – and it’s Brendan O’Brien, a guy with a reputation for taking the wheel for the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam, then steering these artists’ sounds closer to the middle of the road. And so opener Out In the Open, with its skittering guitar arpeggios and thumping kick drum, takes cues from U2, while Squid Ink answers a question few were asking: what would happen if you crossed The Black Keys with Lenny Kravitz? The band hits a high with Time Waited, based around a sample of the deliciously descending piano melody from an early ‘70s track by Buddy Emmons, with the supple-voiced Jim James summoning the ghost of Glen Campbell. James has always had a bit of the hippy mystic about him. When the band hits odd angles or creates towering soundscapes, it works. When it’s dressed up in standard modern-rock garb, though, it doesn’t sound quite so profound.
Barry Divola
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