The Shocker VS. Arcade Fire’s ‘Everything Now’: What Precise Kind of Bullshit is this Album?

More like Arcade Dire

john wilmes
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read
airball, buddy!!!

The Arcade Fire has a new album out and it definitely fucking sucks. A series of poser disco and Win “dad who read a blog” Butler opinings of absolutely nothing, it has been shat on by Pitchfork already, marking the first time Pitchfork hasn’t loved an Arcade Fire album. It’s also the first time they’ve reviewed one while owned by media mothership Conde Nast, a development that has broken the publication free from the network of Indie Rock Mafia favors that forced them to pretend the last two Arcade Fire records were good.

The Shocker, of course, has no money or respect or audience. (Yes, that’s right: if you are reading this, you don’t exist. I’m sorry.) We are here to tell what precise kind of bullshit this album is.

1. “Everything_Now (Continued)” 0:46

A warbly little intro that announces the overwrought title of the album, which Butler holds up as a flag in his pursuit to prove he is the first person to ever think critically about shopping malls and Reddit. Teenagers are snapchatting each other nude photos with hot dog men dancing on their dicks right now and they don’t know who Win is.

2. “Everything Now” 5:03

A really bad aping of ABBA on the piano part and Win going “yeep” at one point that makes you wonder how many times he has walked uninvited down basement stairs where kids are drinking, with a guitar slung around his shoulders and a promise to sing the song that most incenses The Man. There’s some gross appropriation of vaguely ethnic sounding woodwinds on here, too; Late Stage Arcade Fire is like that. It is appropriating something but it’s not doing it well enough to make you wonder what, it just kind of pisses you off.

3. “Signs of Life” 4:36

One of the stupidest songs I’ve ever heard.

4. “Creature Comfort” 4:43

In spite of myself I liked this song for about a week. The idiot 12 year old in me heard the lyrics “God, make me famous / and if you can’t, just make it painless” and the idiot 12 year old in me was like “hell yeah, that is profound.” It’s been a weird angsty summer full of more horniness and humidity than a fragile adjunct can bear, and so that teen in me has had more agency than it ever should. Win brags about someone trying to commit suicide in a bath tub while listening to their first album, in this song. Regine’s backing vocals are kind of cool and spooky.

5. “Peter Pan” 2:48

Oh god. Nooooooooooo. I don’t know if this a totally fair thing to say (#AllBadSongsMatter), but this might be the most dumbly quixotic track on here. Win talks about a “dead-eyed American dream.” Bruce Springsteen can (sort of) get away with being a millionaire and still singing for dudes who save up for years to buy a truck, but Win has only ever sung for people who feign at having real pastoral struggle in their lives by, like, wearing a corny Stetson hat. Sometimes the artifice of fake bourgeoisie difficulty leans far enough into itself to reach it own sublime logic, but here that genre of song quite efficiently reveals its own hollowness, and also it sounds like shit.

6. “Chemistry” 3:37

A pastiche love song with big “Feel Like Making Love” style guitar chords cutting through the middle of it. Too bad it blows ass.

7. “Infinite Content” 1:37

Win sings the words “Infinite content / infinitely content” a bunch of times really quickly here. It’s worse than it sounds.

8. “Infinite_Content” 1:41

Part two: slower version of the bad song, which is still really bad, and which pretends to be country. Is this album over yet.

9. “Electric Blue” 4:02

Not as bad as the other songs. If I heard it as a standalone, without context, I might even say something like “Hey, who is this? Not so bad.” It’s basically the sole orgasm in six months of a dying sunken-cost relationship where no one knows who’s getting the dog, as it stands, though. Do yourself a favor and listen to this song on its own. Just pet the dog, don’t fuck the person who will bore you and don’t buy tables with them. Don’t listen to the rest of Everything Now. Regine sings and Win doesn’t, which is part of why this one is better. It also balances skippy keyboard shit with *whoooosh* sounds pretty well.

10. “Good God Damn” 3:34

Win is back to ruin it all, baby. There’s a blue-eyed slow-step blues vibe going on here with a chorus featuring tame swear words that Win sings with the muster to suggest they’re words that might offend your mom. He also whispers words about getting “messed up” and things “being rough.” One of these days, this band will stop making music.

11. “Put Your Money on Me” 5:53

Butler’s pawing about for his lost grasp on generational angst reaches its hilarious nadir when he says “the basement of heaven” in this chug-along Kraftwerk-wannabe number. A swelling horn section sounds like the ghosts of their music that mattered — you know, the kind that came out when I was a teenaged virgin and didn’t understand economics or medical care. The song contains an incoherent commentary which probably has something to do with the dying state of the thoughtful individual in a polarized hyperactive media landscape. But it might just be about Win getting a haircut.

12. “We Don’t Deserve Love” 6:29

C’mon guys what makes you think you earned more than six minutes of my attention. Another song that might be okay out of context and without Win but here it is basically another heavy-handed drag through the imagination of someone with way too much money to need to propagate one anymore. Famous people with all the artistic resources can’t write good music about anomie and capitalism and they come across as hack try-hards when they attempt to. Song was alternately titled “Remove Everyone’s Penis and Vagina.”

13. “Everything Now (Continued)” 2:22

Unfortunately there’s one more. Sequel to the warbly intro. This time it’s the warbly coda and Butler makes one more bad metaphor involving financial terms and his precious headspace. If you get up to take a shit during this song, the album will be over by the time you’re done.

THE SHOCKER

a website about a blue dog's dreams

john wilmes

Written by

hi

THE SHOCKER

a website about a blue dog's dreams

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade