The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Arcade Fire · produced by Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Nigel Godrich · Columbia Records · 6 May 2022 · eight tracks, about forty minutes
Mode
Rock in suites with numbered parts: synthesiser pulse and programmed drums beside a playing band, piano and strings, the cumulative anthem recovered
Mythos
The fall of empire widened to the cosmos; the storm as the bond between two people; a parent’s blessing on a child going out; the solitary I against the plural WE
Phase
Eight tracks in two titled halves; four numbered parts of two suites in the first, a two-part hinge, a two-part pair and the title song in the second
Presentation
Album; eight tracks in their original order, about forty minutes, the standard edition as first released by Columbia on 6 May 2022
Register
Win Butler’s lead voice and Régine Chassagne’s in lead and harmony; guitars, bass, drums, piano, synthesisers, strings and horns; Peter Gabriel as a guest voice
Scale
One anxious self, a couple, a parent and child, a society of screens, a falling civilisation and the centre of the galaxy
Governing Proposition
A band returns, after a poorly received record, with its shortest and most concentrated album: a record cut into two halves titled I and WE, in which a self dissolved by the feed and by the fear of a failing civilisation is answered by attachment, to a partner, a child and a common plural. The passage from one half to the other happens inside a single song, in a hush broken by drums, and the record’s one large claim is the form it takes.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The record opens inside a head. A nervous synthesiser pulse sets the time, and over it a voice turns on itself, caught in a loop it cannot leave. Age of Anxiety I makes no argument; it sets a condition. Its second part, subtitled Rabbit Hole, drives the condition into the screen: programmed pulse and live band fused into a dark momentum that has more pull than height. Before anything is said about the world, the record has made audible what it is like to be a self thinned by noise, attention scattered and turned back on itself.
WE is Arcade Fire’s sixth studio album, released by Columbia Records on 6 May 2022, produced by Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Nigel Godrich. The band that made it was Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, Jeremy Gara and Will Butler, whose departure was announced in March 2022, before the release, and who plays on the record. It runs about forty minutes, the band’s shortest studio album, in eight tracks, most of them numbered parts of suites. Peter Gabriel sings on Unconditional II (Race and Religion).
The record is laid out in two halves, and they are named on the record itself: the first is titled I, the second WE. The division is the design, not an accident of sides. The first half is four tracks in two numbered suites, Age of Anxiety in two parts and End of the Empire in four; the second is The Lightning in two parts, Unconditional in two, and the title song alone. The argument of the whole is the passage from the first title to the second, and the record places that passage with care.
Movement II
The third track turns from the private to the civil. End of the Empire I-III begins as a slow piano ballad of long phrases and widens, by degrees, into strings and a full band, a lament no longer for one self but for a culture that has lost its hold. It is the band’s most stately elevation in years, and the restraint of its making is part of its height: the piano and strings are placed so that the song breathes before it swells, and the swell, when it comes, is earned by the waiting.
Its fourth part, subtitled Sagittarius A*, is short and lifts the frame again, from a civilisation to the cosmos, the voice turned toward the black hole at the galaxy’s centre named in its title. The height is colder here, and the image is large: the centre that swallows, set over a private crisis and a public decline. Its refrain, “I unsubscribe”, answers the whole first half with a refusal, the self leaving the feed and the falling empire both. It is the first half’s exit, and it earns its brevity.
This is where the record’s disclosure is strongest in reach and weakest in finding. The condition it names is true: a self dissolved by the feed and by the fear of a failing civilisation, in the years around 2020. But the words name it more often than they uncover it. The titles say anxiety, the rabbit hole, the end of the empire; the refrain announces its finding. The fall of empire stands as frame and the black hole as image, and no figure in the songs bears either. The music finds more than the words do, and the record’s best finding is still to come.
Movement III
The fifth track is the hinge, and it is the record. The Lightning I begins in a hush, a held and whispered first part that stays low exactly long enough. Then the drums enter, and the song becomes a long cumulative surge in the band’s early manner, its refrain, “don’t quit on me”, carried higher on each pass. The turn from I to WE does not happen between songs; it happens inside this one, and it is audible as a change of state, from a voice alone to a band driving together.
The song is built in two parts precisely so that this can happen, and it is the best-made track on the record: the length of the hush, the placing of the drums, the build of the surge are each judged to make the turn of the whole record heard. It is also where the myth is most fully built. The storm is not a backdrop but the bond between two people, the weather that holds them together, and the refrain is spoken by one to the other. The record’s claim, that the cure for the solitary self is the plural, is here made in sound before it is made in words.
Change this form and the record loses what it knows. Run the songs in another order, or without the division into halves, and there is no passage from one condition to the other, only a set of songs about anxiety and a set about love. The numbered suites serve the passage: the two suites of the first half are movements of the I, and the two-part hinge carries the record across. The form is the instrument of the knowledge here, on the first half and at the hinge, and its law, a voice dissolving answered by voices joined, holds from the first pulse to this surge.
Movement IV
The sixth track is the record’s warmest particular. Unconditional I (Lookout Kid) is a parent’s blessing on a child going out into the world, an old pattern, the father’s charge, given in folk-rock dress and with real warmth. It is the one place where the plural the record names acquires a face: not a crowd or a society but a single child addressed by a single parent. The blessing restates in a lighter key what The Lightning has just said, and its arrangement is a standard build, but its address gives the second half its human centre.
Unconditional II (Race and Religion) is a bright pop duet with Peter Gabriel, and it is the slightest track on the record. Its idea is spent early, and it obeys the genre it borrows more than the argument it is set in; its setting uses its famous guest lightly. After the hinge, the second half’s four tracks follow one another as variations on one warm mode, unconditional love and holding on, more than as a form that develops. The design is load-bearing in the first half and at the hinge; on the last three tracks it is a frame.
The record is a return. The band’s language, the communal anthem, the cumulative build, the chorus of many voices, the apocalyptic frame set against domestic tenderness, was established on its first records. Funeral and The Suburbs, at 8.6 and 8.4 on this desk, made and extended it, and Neon Bible and Reflektor stand at 7.8. The album of 2017 had turned away into disco and irony and was poorly received, and WE turns back. Its turns within the return are real, the numbered suites, the concentration, the sparer production, the stately piano, and the stake was real. But the wager runs toward a proven path, and the return is a correction of course.
Movement V
The title song closes the record gently, almost acoustically, and it stands to the opening as the law’s other end: the first track is the I at its most enclosed, a voice trapped in its own loop, and the last the plural reached. The two most distant sounds on the record obey one rule. The range between them is moderate, electronic rock, piano ballad, cumulative anthem, folk-rock and bright pop, and the frame joins it; the law strains only where the cosmic leap of End of the Empire widens the frame further than the second half answers, and where Unconditional II follows its genre. But the title song is too slight to bear the weight of being the destination the whole design names.
The record holds a wide span for forty minutes: the anxious self, the couple, the parent and child, a society of screens, a falling civilisation and the centre of the galaxy. The frame of I and WE joins several of these orders. They are present in turn more than held in one structure: history and the state are evoked as frame rather than held as subject, the cosmos enters for one short track and leaves, and the sacred is absent or only implied in the language of the unconditional.
Its later life has been short and charged. The recording is whole, in print and streamed, and its production does not date in sound, though the feed and the isolation of its years are topical surfaces. Within four months of its release, in August 2022, allegations against the band’s singer were reported, the tour went on in a changed climate, and the record has since been heard less as an album than as part of a contested catalogue. No later records are shown to have turned on it. It is a concentrated and well-made record whose one large claim is carried by its form, and its standing rests on that form and on The Lightning more than on what it found.
Act III · The Twelve
Forty minutes, the band’s tightest record, and most of it resists the subtractive test. Age of Anxiety I must open: a nervous synthesiser pulse and a voice caught in its own head set the condition before any argument is made. Its second part is the escalation into the screen; End of the Empire I-III turns the private toward the civil, a slow piano ballad widening into a lament for a culture; its fourth part is the first half’s exit. The Lightning I, II is the hinge the halves need. The test bites in the second half: Unconditional II (Race and Religion) is slight, its idea spent early, and Unconditional I restates what The Lightning has just said.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The disclosure can be stated: a self dissolved by the feed and by the fear of a failing civilisation can be recovered only by attachment, to a partner, a child, a common plural. That is a true condition of the years around 2020, and the sound carries much of it. The jittering pulse and compressed voice of the Age of Anxiety tracks make anxiety audible, and The Lightning’s release from hush into drive is a disclosure through form that the words alone could not make. What holds the figure is that the condition is more often stated than uncovered: titles and refrains name the subject, and “I unsubscribe” announces its finding rather than finding it in a particular.
Score: 7.4 / 10
The record rises on four or five of its eight tracks, and its heights are real. End of the Empire I-III is the first: a piano ballad of long phrases that opens into strings and a full band, the band’s most stately elevation in years. Its fourth part reaches a colder height, the voice turned toward the black hole named in its title. The Lightning I, II is the summit: a whispered first part, then the drums enter and the song becomes a long cumulative surge, its refrain “don’t quit on me” carried higher on each pass. Against these, Unconditional I is buoyant rather than elevated, Unconditional II level, and the title song a gentle close more than an arrival.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Myth is built in more places than it first appears. The fall of empire is the largest frame, and End of the Empire lifts it from a private crisis to a civilisation in decline and then to the cosmos, the black hole as the centre that swallows. That frame is evoked more than borne by any figure. The second half builds. The Lightning makes the storm the bond between two people, and Unconditional I (Lookout Kid) is a parent’s blessing on a child going out into the world, the old pattern of the father’s charge given particular warmth. Above both, the record lays out across its halves the opposition of the solitary I and the plural WE, an opposition its form inhabits, though the plural acquires a face only in the blessing.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The inheritance is the band’s own language: the communal anthem, the cumulative build, the chorus of many voices, the apocalyptic frame set against domestic tenderness, all established on its first records. The previous album, of 2017, had turned from that language into disco and irony and was poorly received; this record turns back. Its turns within the return are real: the suite form with numbered parts, the shortest and most concentrated record the band had made, a sparer production, and a stately piano writing in End of the Empire that is new in emphasis. The stake was real too: a band trying to regain its audience. What holds the figure is that the wager runs toward a proven path, a correction more than a swerve.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The form carries real knowledge. The record is cut into two titled halves, I and WE, and its argument is the passage from one to the other. Run the songs in another order or without the division and the record loses its one large claim, that the cure for the solitary self is the plural. The numbered suites serve this: Age of Anxiety and End of the Empire are each one movement of the I, and The Lightning is built in two parts so that the turn happens inside a song. The sequence is counted here, once. What holds the figure is the second half, whose tracks follow as variations on one warm mode, and a title song too slight for the destination the design names.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Four and a half years give little evidence, and this axis can only be forecast. What there is repays return in the making: the layering of piano, strings and synthesiser in End of the Empire, the placing of the drums’ entry in The Lightning. The suite structure invites hearing the record whole, and the design of I and WE is noticed more on a second hearing than on a first. Semantically the yield is thin. The words state their meanings, and once heard, the feed, the rabbit hole, the falling empire, the parent’s blessing, they do not reorganise on return. No body of reconsideration has yet reopened the record, and its reception was largely settled on release. The figure forecasts modest depth.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The field is the rock album of the early 2020s, and the record’s contest is with the band’s own past and with the records of isolation made in the same years. Intrinsic force is small: the suite form, the cumulative anthem and the theme of attention dissolved by screens were each available, and the last was common in its moment. The distinction is concentration and craft, a band doing its own thing more tightly. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: no later records are shown to have turned on this one, the band’s influence runs through its first records, and the record’s public life was cut short within months by the allegations against its singer reported in August 2022. That holds it lowest here.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Survival is weighed over four and a half years, on form, then presence, then fabric. The form is whole: the recording exists as released and is in print and streamed. Presence is charged. Within four months of release the allegations against the band’s singer were reported, the tour went on in a changed climate, and the record has since been heard less as an album than as part of a contested catalogue. That charge is to presence, not to form, and it is weighed as such. The fabric is fixed in part to its moment: the feed, unsubscribing and the isolation of the pandemic years are topical surfaces, though the production does not date in sound. Span and charged presence together hold the figure.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Command of the recorded medium, with the words weighed elsewhere, is strong and in places load-bearing. Godrich’s production is the cleanest and most spacious the band has had: the instruments are separated where earlier records massed them, and End of the Empire’s piano and strings are placed with a restraint that lets the song breathe before it swells. The Lightning is the best-made track: the hush of its first part is held exactly long enough, and the drums’ entry is placed to make the turn of the whole record audible. Age of Anxiety II fuses programmed pulse and live band without seam. Against this, the second half is competent rather than commanding, and the lead voice serviceable rather than an instrument of command.
Score: 8.0 / 10
One law governs the record: a voice dissolving in noise and fear is answered by voices joined. Take the two most distant elements, Age of Anxiety I, a synthesiser pulse and a voice trapped in its own loop, and the title song, a gentle, almost acoustic close. They obey the law as its two ends: the first is the I at its most enclosed, the last the plural reached, and the hinge between them is placed inside one song so that the law is heard changing state. The range between, electronic rock, piano ballad, cumulative anthem, folk-rock and bright pop, is joined by the frame. The law strains in Unconditional II, which obeys its genre more than the argument, and in the cosmic leap the second half never answers.
Score: 8.0 / 10
Judged on what the record holds. Consciousness is held, the anxious, fragmented self of the first half. The couple is held in The Lightning and the family in Unconditional I, a parent speaking to a child. Society and its media are present as the feed and the rabbit hole; history as the empire’s end; the natural order and the cosmos as the storm and the black hole. That is a wide span for forty minutes, wider than most albums attempt, and the frame of I and WE joins several of these orders. What holds the figure is integration: history and the state are evoked as frame rather than held as subject, the cosmos enters for one short track and leaves, and the sacred is absent or only implied.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made and The Inner Law at 8.0, then The Sublime at 7.9. A production clean and spacious, load-bearing at the hinge, where the hush of The Lightning and the drums’ entry make the turn of the whole record audible; one law, a voice dissolving answered by voices joined, kept from the enclosed pulse of the opening to the plural of the close; and height on four or five of eight tracks, highest in The Lightning’s cumulative surge and the stately widening of End of the Empire.
Limiting Dimension
Pressure on Tradition at 6.6: no reorganisation of the field, its suite form, anthem and theme each available, no later record shown to turn on it, and a public life cut short within months. Then The Bottomless Well and The Encompassed at 7.0: words that state their meanings and do not reorganise on return, and many orders present in turn more than held in one structure. Then The Swerve at 7.2: a return to the band’s own proven manner, a correction more than a turn.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5, by a tenth. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.7, The Made at 8.0, The Inner Law at 8.0, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Archetypal Deep at 7.6, The Unconcealment at 7.4, The Imperishable at 7.4, The Swerve at 7.2 and Pressure on Tradition at 6.6 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Unconcealment, 7.4, The Imperishable, 7.4, The Swerve, 7.2, The Bottomless Well, 7.0, and Pressure on Tradition, 6.6, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.5, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · the album as first released by Columbia Records on 6 May 2022, in its standard edition, eight tracks in their original order in two halves titled I and WE, about forty minutes; produced by Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Nigel Godrich; judged from knowledge of the recording, its words and its reception. No recording, lyric sheet or score was in hand, and running times are approximate. Tour versions, later live recordings and any later editions are context, not the object. The sequence is argued once, under The Living Form; The Made is the command of the recorded medium; the words bear on The Unconcealment and The Archetypal Deep. Songs are cited by title, and words are quoted only where certain and never beyond four words. Facts that could not be verified, among them the places and dates of recording, a short instrumental prelude said to open some physical editions, the exact running time, a children’s or group chorus, a literary source for the title, the withdrawal of a supporting act from the tour and the band’s earlier use of numbered suites, are not given.