My plan is to break this song down into the bare elements that make it such a great track.
In the beginning of the track there's an abstract build that grabs your attention and leads in to the drumbeat with a super funky time signature that you can't help but like. When the bongo beat comes in there's some mildy modulated deep synth waves that lead into the guitar riff. The intro works because it forms a sort of mysterious dare I say eerie tone that sets the mood for the whole song, and also because of the fact that it's not so long that they lose your attention.
After around forty seconds of the intro, the vocals come in. Win Butler (lead singer for Arcade Fire) begins singing in an airy tone that becomes more distinct as he gets into the second line, this helps transition from the eerie sound in the intro to the more distinct bounce of the synth notes in the first verse of the song.
The chorus is brought in with some very distinctive almost gunshot like snaps that aren't overpowering but let you know that something is coming. In the chorus there's very catchy lyrics that are tied in by a droning saxophone.
In the bridge there's some saxophone harmonies and they talk a lot more about reflektors and stuff. And if I'm not mistaken David Bowie makes an appearance.
Then comes the outro, it's a seemingly perfect way to cool down at the end of the song and it brings it all together with a simple piano riff.
Throughout the whole song there are variations that keep your attention and add more layers of sound that overlap and flow really well.
Now that I've told you about the elements of the song itself I'll give you my opinion on it.
If you listen to the song you can tell that it had some influence from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, I love LCD Soundsystem so I'm perfectly ok with that, in fact I'm really happy about it.
I love this song, it meshes well and it's fairly minimalistic and I can dig that. For a long time music was all about how many layers of sound you could have and the more full the sound was the better. Now music on the mainstream is taking a minimalist turn, first with Kanye's Yeezus and Jay-Z's Magna Carta and the Holy Grail and now with Reflektor. I'm loving the turn music is taking towards minimalism.
Reflektor is one that will go down in the recordbooks. All of the hype for this album was paid in full. I love it!
Cheers,
Michael
No comments:
Post a Comment