A survey of the responses to the new Arcade Fire seems to suggest that both the proletariat listeners and the anointed reviewers are ambivalent.

For me, this is a third era for Arcade Fireness. I don’t have much street cred, so the fact that I’ve been an Arcade Fire fan since before it was a thing to be (i.e., before Funeral) is a little factoid that I will be clinging to well into my rocking-chair crafts-at-3 days. One day I’ll probably end up explaining patiently and through empty gums to some drooling wreck that I don’t have the eye sight to identify as Win Butler that I liked the Arcade Fire before Yellow Stereo, and No Cars Go wasn’t news to me, man.

When Funeral came out I loved it and stacked my mix tapes with it. After a while I got attenuated to it. I haven’t listened to it in a long time. Such is my second era. So when I saw that Neon Bible was out I “got excited”.

I’ve listened to it. Some music has that little hook that, regardless of the particular details, says hellyes to you. Some doesn’t. An argument could be made that the hellyes is purely subjective, and there is no reason why it should be shared person to person. The modern history of music suggests that it often is. Maybe this is a case where my hellyes is out of line with other peoples’. I get that the album is over the top, maybe self confident or even hubristic. But dammit, this album does it for me. The self-indulgence is there but rooted enough. The slick production is justified by the material. The angst is there not obnoxiously fashionably unfashionable. For a hugely produced, inevitably popular album, it seems honest and driven and like it needed to be done, rather than it needed to be popular. And the music, she be good.

So I like the new Arcade Fire album. It has me reaching for the volume knob, and nodding my head. And in these troubled times, what more can any of us want?