“Everything Now” is the first single from Arcade Fire’s upcoming 2017 album, Everything Now. While their previous record, Reflektor, divided fans with its progression towards a darker, dance-oriented sound fueled by trips to Haiti, “Everything Now” signals a shift towards the brighter side of the disco ball. Reflektor was a refreshing change for the band, as they broke their indie rock mold, and they continue to do so with “Everything Now”.

Arcade Fire are still interested in making dance music, but those dark, Haitian drumbeats are replaced with a bright, shimmering rhythm that could’ve come off an ABBA record. “Everything Now” is driven by a simple bassline, shimmering piano, and dancing flutes. It gives the song a very summery, throwback dance sound, which becomes even more apparent when listening to the instrumental. However, as it always is with Arcade Fire, a closer look at the lyrics reveal a much darker song than it is on the surface. It explores themes they’ve covered before such as isolation and dissatisfaction coming with the rise of technology and instant gratification. Lines like “Every inch of space in your head / Is filled up with the things that you read” allude to the way media is consumed. Every movie, song, or book you could ever want is at your fingertips and “I guess you’ve got everything now”. The song conveys that material goods fill the void of more important matters. In the third verse, Win Butler sings about a “happy family with everything now” with an absent father and neglectful mother. Thematically, “Everything Now” could fit nicely in The Suburbs. The bridge of the song features a recording they took of an audience at the festival Voodoo Music + Arts Experience in New Orleans last year. The song features a sing-along chorus with a call and response style delivery between Win and the background singers. “Everything Now” might not be the most grandiose or poignant song in their discography, but it was a smart choice for the lead single. It’s bright, shimmering, upbeat, and will surely win them new fans with the ’80s throwback sound that’s made a huge comeback. Fans of the message Arcade Fire carried will be pleased with Win’s passionate delivery on information overload. The title track is also the perfect introduction to the faux company they’ve created to promote the album, Everything Now Corporation.

“Everything Now” isn’t going to appease some of Arcade Fire’s long term fans, but it will definitely gain them a wider audience without sacrificing any artistic credibility. It also isn’t necessarily indicative of what the rest of the record will sound like, as the latest single, “Creature Comfort”, is drenched in a dirty synth. As a whole, it’s a promising look at the new record.

Pressing Details: This is the limited pressing of the single on orange vinyl released by Columbia Records. It’s supposedly limited to 2,000 copies, but it doesn’t look to be too hard to get a hold of at this time. That number is almost definitely false as there is copies sitting in my local record store, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. When they dropped the single “Reflektor” in 2013 the 12″ single was scarce, but there’s still plenty of copies floating around today. It’s hard to say how easy this will be to find in a year but I’d recommend picking it up sooner rather than later. Side A features the album version of the song while Side B features the instrumental cut. It comes in pretty standard packaging for a 12″ single, an outer sleeve cut with a center hole for the label to show through. The record is pressed at 33 rpm instead of 45 rpm for some reason, but it still sounds excellent.

Due to the limited nature of this release I’d definitely recommend getting out to your local record store as soon as possible to grab a copy. I was able to purchase one through Bull Moose here, but they won’t last forever. There are also copies available on Amazon here.