It’s a worthy undertaking because this kind of acute despair feels more pervasive than ever. But Everything Now attempts to capture life within and without the content loop-the paranoia, narcissism, and “creature comforts” within the love and fear without. It would be one thing if the tiresome rollout ran contrary to its music-a bit of cosmic brain Twitter irony to temper another earnest Arcade Fire album. The aim of their online theatre, apparently, was to bolster some of the record’s themes of infinite consumerism in media, the overwhelming anxiety of the moment, the recursive loop of technology-sex, drugs, and Marshall McLuhan. Before its release, they created a fake “global media and e-commerce platform” called Everything Now, a brand play that spawned Creature Comfort cereal, engaged with KFC’s Twitter account, and published “fake news” websites, one of which was a satirical review of the record in question. Who Arcade Fire became on their new album Everything Now-a tangled, joyless record of Banksy disco and bloodless new wave that examines fear, love, and suicide in our modern media landscape-is anyone’s guess.
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