Everything Now by The Arcade Fire

Everything Now, Arcade Fire's fifth album, arrived on July 28, 2017, and it finds the Montreal band trading the choir-loft grandeur for a mirrorball. They produced it themselves with some heavyweight help: Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter and Pulp bassist Steve Mackey at the desk, longtime ally Markus Dravs co-producing two tracks, and Portishead's Geoff Barrow and Eric Heigle each adding touches to one. The result leans hard on synth-pop and dance-rock, with Win Butler and Régine Chassagne out front of a band that sounds perfectly happy under the strobe lights.

The title track glides on a bright, looping groove, and "Creature Comfort" pumps and twitches like a racing pulse. It all came wrapped in an elaborate marketing campaign, and critics split down the middle: some called it a misstep, while several others put it among the year's best albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.