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May 9, 2025Pink Elephant doesn’t have quite the same swagger as earlier albums. It is almost too personal, like listening to a preacher begging for forgiveness from his flock. Yet the sheer power of Arcade Fire in full flight should be enough to restore any sinner’s faith in rock and roll.
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Record CollectorMay 16, 2025Theis ruminative reminder that at their core they're equal parts inspired by Cohen and Bowie is a shrewd, often stirring step. [Jun 2025, p.103]
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May 9, 2025Pink Elephant feels like an album Arcade Fire "had to" make, one that addresses a very public period of the band's history without getting too deep (or deep enough at all) into the matter, like they just want everyone to forget about it and move on to the inevitable next album cycle.
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May 8, 2025The album itself offers quaint harmonies and big beats, á la We, set atop the bossy stomp of 2013’s Reflektor. While Pink Elephant‘s 10 songs don’t come close to Reflektor’s magisterial range, it’s often sweet, enticing, and direct — a cathartic manifesto in miniature.
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MojoMay 7, 2025It's largely stripped of their loftier excesses. Instead, the tone - meditative, inward-looking - coalesces around Circle Of Trust's tender electro, Ride Or Die's minimal escapist lullaby or the tech-U2 of She Cries Diamond Rain. [Jun 2025, p.80]
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May 15, 2025Was it really his idea to add the distorted microphones and insectoid buzzing into the overstuffed “Alien Nation” or the lopsided drum panning on “Stuck in my Head”? Aside from those curiously tacky outliers, Lanois’ tasteful ambience dampens the band’s everlasting, pulsating indie rock
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May 7, 2025Problematic lyrics notwithstanding, a listlessness has crept into Arcade Fire’s songwriting, and the themes with which they’ve previously used to tie their albums together come across as muddled or tacked on here.
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UncutMay 7, 2025It reprises their indie-modified take on panoramic, heartland rock and synth-pop, though with little emotional impact and no clear intent. [Jun 2025, p.30]
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May 19, 2025Seriously, this album is clunky, poorly mixed, offensively self-serving, and annoyingly regurgitated.
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May 12, 2025Arcade Fire seems incapable of crafting tracks now in which one solid musical element isn’t let down by another poor one. As a longtime fan, the resulting calamity has been like being unable to look away from a car crash.
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May 8, 2025Pink Elephant isn’t jumping the shark, so much as it is a formal DOD.