Arcade Fire "Reflektor" , new shapes of rock

Arcade Fire's lush, imaginative fourth album, produced in part by James Murphy and featuring guest vocals from David Bowie, is a triumph, but not a victory lap; the band never sounds content enough for that. Instead, it's an anxious, occasionally downright paranoid album that asks big, barbed questions aimed not just at the man who may or may not be upstairs, but the more terrestrial gods of rock history, too.

Nearly a decade after Funeral, Butler still sings like everything is at stake. And while there's always been a physicality about the Arcade Fire's sound, the rhythm section has never popped on one of their albums the way it does here. It's limber and loose, as though the songs were performed live; the arrangements breathe, seethe, and sweat.

Reflektor sounds as if the Arcade Fire have ingested a bunch of the great art-rock records you're "supposed" to learn to appreciate in your formative listening years, and thrown them into the fire in an attempt to make new shapes from the smoke.