Arcade Fire Feels the Need to Release a Cassette
My feelings about cassettes are clear: they’re a hateful outdated technology that deserve to go the way of the 8-track. But for some unfathomable reason, there are people who don’t realize that we’re halfway through the second decade of the 21st century and feel the need to keep the cassette alive. This rabble now includes Arcade Fire.
Later this week, The Reflektor Tapes, their documentary of the making of the Reflektor album, will get a theatrical release before heading to places like iTunes and Netflix. To commemorate things, the band has a new 7-inch single (which is fine) featuring “Get Right” b/w “Crucified Again” which will be released in limited numbers. Then come November 6, a six-track cassette will be available featuring some unreleased tracks.
1.“Apocrypha”
2.”Women of a Certain Age”
3.”Flashbulb Eyes (Dennis Bovell remix ft. Linton Kwesi Johnson)”
4.”Soft Power”
5.”Get Right”
6.”Crucified Again”
I’ve long retired any gear that plays cassettes so I’ll wait until someone rips all this to YouTube. However, if you feel the need to have this thing, you can pre-order it here.
This is as obnoxious as their documentary. Seriously. I was one of the many people who went to the TIFF ‘World Premiere’ (using that term lightly – can’t be much of a “World Premiere” if you’re screening it in Montreal on the same night at an earlier time) last week and to sum it up, my time would have been better spent sleeping in my bed, as opposed to the seat in the Bloor Cinema. ‘The Reflektor Tapes’ is the most artsy fartsy, arrogant piece of work. Boring, actually – which is rather ironic because the live show this movie documents was one of the most energetic shows I have ever been to (how many shows have you been to at the ACC where every single person – from the front row all the way back to the top row – were dancing all night?). They barely touched on any subject long enough to understand what the hell they were trying to get across. It was like having a conversation with a strung out junkie with ADHD.
As a long time fan, it’s my dream that Arcade Fire would lose this hipster, pseudo-intellectual nonsense long enough that people who truly appreciate quality music would begin to understand what it is that makes them special. Alas, it is but a dream, isn’t it?
You can almost bet that ‘The Reflektor Tapes’ will be released on Beta.