Review: Arcade Fire – Everything Now

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When Arcade Fire won the Album of the Year Grammy for The Suburbs, it felt like the beginning of something. Six years on from Funeral, the record that made the band torchbearers of the critically acclaimed indie rock scene, here they were, finally being recognized on the big stage. The records they beat—pop juggernauts from Katy Perry, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Lady Antebellum—were all more indicative of what the radio sounded like in 2010. But Arcade Fire’s victory showed that, maybe, the pop world was finally ready to embrace something darker and more nuanced. Maybe they were ready to let a rock band back into the fold.

Looking back now, the Grammy win feels more like the end of something. Future Grammy winners didn’t sound or look much like Arcade Fire. Neither did radio stars. Instead, on 2013’s Reflektor, Arcade Fire started looking (and sounding) a lot like the pop insiders. Just like most of the other marquee acts that released albums that year—Daft Punk, Justin Timberlake (x2), Jay-Z, Eminem, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga—Arcade Fire made it clear that they were going for a capital-B Blockbuster. The rollout was excessive and overblown; the album was long and ambitious; the hype stretched on for months. And the songs…well, they didn’t have that much to offer, at the end of the deep, deep rabbit hole that Arcade Fire dug for fans. Writing for Grantland, Steven Hyden called 2013 “The Year Music Failed to Blockbust.” He wasn’t wrong, and Arcade Fire was at the center of it.

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Gerard Way Talks to Nerdist

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Gerard Way sat down with the Nerdist, he spoke a little about the influence Chester Bennington had on his life:

His band and bringing us on tour, that changed my life. I met my wife. We have an amazing life now and a daughter. My memories of that period and meeting Linds again are tied into Chester and his band. It’s so sad. I think a lot about mental health and it’s something I’ve always wanted to address in Doom Patrol, so I definitely think we’ll see a lot more of that now. I’ve been through depression, dark times, and therapy. I can really apply that stuff to these characters.

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Adobe to Discontinue Flash in 2020

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Frederic Lardinois, writing for TechCrunch:

Adobe today announced that Flash, the once-ubiquitous plugin that allowed you to play your first Justin Bieber video on YouTube and Dolphin Olympics 2 on Kongregate, will be phased out by the end of 2020. At that point, Adobe will stop updating and distributing Flash. Until then, Adobe will still partner with the likes of Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft and Google to offer security updates for Flash in their browsers and support new versions of them, but beyond that, Adobe will not offer any new Flash features.

Good riddance.

Manchester Orchestra Talk With Spotlight Report

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Andy Hull of Manchester Orchestra sat down with Spotlight Report:

I think so much of that comes from like giving up control for the greater good and letting go of your ego and your pride. When I was younger, it wasn’t that I knew what I was doing [laughs] or knew that I was being a certain way – it was just all I knew. As the years go on, you start to realise how un-smart you are and how much you need to surround yourself with the best people. Once I started to realise Cope was a big part of that, being in a room, working on these songs and realising other ideas were super valuable.

111 NFL Players Examined, 110 Were Found to Have C.T.E.

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The New York Times:

Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist, has examined the brains of 202 deceased football players. A broad survey of her findings was published on Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Of the 202 players, 111 of them played in the N.F.L. — and 110 of those were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.

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