Everything Now
Everything Now is the fifth studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on July 28, 2017, through Sonovox Records (physical release),[4] Columbia Records, and Rough Trade Records.[5] It was produced by Arcade Fire, alongside Thomas Bangalter of the electronic-house duo Daft Punk and Steve Mackey, the bassist of the band Pulp. Additionally, Markus Dravs, one of Arcade Fire's frequent collaborators, co-produced two tracks, and he, Geoff Barrow of Portishead, and Eric Heigle each provided additional production on one track.[6]
This article is about the Arcade Fire album. For the album's title track, see Everything Now (song). For the Pelle Carlberg album, see Everything. Now! For the TV series, see Everything Now (TV series).Everything Now
July 28, 2017
September 2016 – April 2017
- Boombox, New Orleans
- Sonovox, Montreal
- Gang, Paris
47:11
- Sonovox
- Columbia
- Rough Trade
- Arcade Fire
- Thomas Bangalter
- Steve Mackey
The album is a departure from the sound of Arcade Fire's previous records, influenced as it is by synth-pop, dance-rock, and other derivatives of electronic music, and has been called more "digestible"[7] than their earlier output. It was promoted by an elaborate marketing campaign, as well as five singles: the title track, "Creature Comfort", "Signs of Life", "Electric Blue", and "Put Your Money on Me".
Upon release, Everything Now proved polarizing with critics—some reviews said it was a misstep for the band, but several publications named it one of the best albums of the year. It reached the top of the charts in numerous countries, including Arcade Fire's home country of Canada, the US, and the UK.
Artwork[edit]
The front cover of the album features a picture of an art installation in Death Valley created by the artist JR for the band that consisted of a billboard depicting a mountain range placed in front of the actual mountain range depicted on the billboard, which comments on the blurry line between artifice and reality in the modern world; the album's title appears on a sign below the billboard. The back cover features a man riding a horse, a camp fire, and an arcade machine on fire (a visual pun on the band's name). The entire scene was shot in many different lighting and weather conditions, and two variants of the artwork, labelled "Day" and "Night", were created for CD pressings, while twenty variants of the artwork were created for vinyl pressings, each with the title on the front cover in a different language and a unique photograph of the mountain-and-billboard-scene. The shrink wrap around the album had a radial dotted-line pattern on the front, suggesting the sky in the photograph was printed on the inside of a large dome structure, and a tracklist on the back, which was disguised as the logos of fictional companies that financed the album.
As a continuation of the commercialization theme, the booklet for the album was formatted to resemble a flyer for a supermarket, with the song durations appearing like dollar amounts.
Commercial performance[edit]
Everything Now debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart in the US with 100,000 album-equivalent units, of which 94,000 were pure album sales.[35] It is Arcade Fire's third US number-one album.[35]