Website leak puts a dampener on Arcade Fire’s launch of new single Reflektor

 
Rex Features
9 September 2013

Arcade Fire's much-anticipated new single Reflektor, which apparently features David Bowie on backing vocals, was leaked online ahead of its unveiling today.

Hype for the song had grown after the band released a series of cryptic images on Instagram and Twitter.

The mysterious campaign included a logo for the track painted on pavements around London and was meant to build up to its debut at 9pm tonight. But fans were given an early taster when it was leaked on music website Bandcamp.com over the weekend.

It was swiftly removed by the Canadian band’s record label. A spokesman for Arcade Fire refused to confirm that it is Bowie singing on the track.

The band’s last album, 2010’s The Suburbs, topped the UK albums chart and won a Brit award.

Bowie is helping to save the dilapidated London bandstand where he played a concert as a struggling musician. In 1969 he played at Croydon Road Recreation Ground in Beckenham to raise money for his Beckenham Arts Lab. A fan recently found the bandstand’s metal was rusted and the timber rotten. Bowie has signed albums to be raffled to raise money to save it and there will be a £5-a-head fundraising concert on Sunday.

Our chief pop critic David Smyth reviews Arcade Fire's new single Reflektor

ARCADE FIRE
Reflektor
★★★★★

How disappointing for Arcade Fire, and typical of the digital music age, that the band can plan a comeback based intricately around the number nine and then see their new single leak on the eighth.

Reflektor, preceding the Montreal group’s fourth album of the same nine-lettered name, was due to be revealed at 9pm today, 09/09. “Our song escapes on little silver discs,” Win Butler sings at one point. If it was only coming out on CD, they might not have had this problem.

But this band can transcend stunts with great music. The new song will be played and loved long after today’s official unveiling. It’s a pulsating, grooving epic with tonnes to explore.

What’s most exciting is the presence of three vocalists — Butler, his wife Régine Chassagne singing in French and then, halfway through, David Bowie. His portentous tones on the chorus give heft while a saxophone rumbles and a metronomic house beat thuds onwards.

This sound could be credited to new producer James Murphy of electronica band LCD Soundsystem, but it was doubtlessly initiated by a restlessly creative band that is unafraid to move forwards as they grow bigger. However the rest of the album appears, I can't wait to hear it.

David Smyth

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