It might have received widespread negative reviews, but I think Pink Elephant is my favourite Arcade Fire record since Neon Bible in 2007 and perhaps even since their astonishing debut record, Funeral, in 2005. I know that I said something similar in 2017 in relation to Everything Now (also #2 that year), which is a record I still really like but that has dipped somewhat in my estimation over the 8 years since. So I guess we’ll see how this one fares longer term. The List can only ever be a snapshot, though, and, as it stands, Pink Elephant has ended 2025 a whisker away from taking top spot (NB: there was no runaway winner this year…).
My sense is that people disliked Pink Elephant for two main reasons: first, because it is quite simplistic musically, as compared to their previous work; secondly, because people are angry at Win Butler and don’t like how this record engages with the allegations made against him.
On the first of those, it’s true that the music is massively scaled back here. There are no bombastic, theatrical works of multi-instrumental chaos à la Funeral. Indeed, tracks like ‘Ride or Die’ aim for the other extreme: minimalism writ small. Even with Pink Elephant’s more ambitious tracks, like my album favourite, ‘I Love Her Shadow’, the beats are simple and the refrains are notably easy on the ear. But by stripping right back and focusing on melody and subtlety, Arcade Fire have produced something better than they’ve managed in years. Recognisably them, but different: catchier, more focused, more immediate.
As for the lyrics, and the controversy, Pink Elephant is an invitation to have a view on it all because the album very deliberately focuses on it. But I just don’t feel I know enough to have a view: the allegations against Butler are so serious but he denies them and nothing has been proven. So the lyrics here are, I guess, either shameless or courageous, and it’s unlikely ever to be clear which. Taking it at face value, the writing feels bold and artistic, if a little solipsistic.
Anyway, I know I’m in a minority on this, but I think Pink Elephant is awesome (please don’t cancel me). After 2022’s very mediocre WE – the only one of Arcade Fire’s previous records not to make this List – it is a pretty great return. I knew it was going to be in the running for my record of the year from about halfway through my first play of it. In the end, it missed out by about as close a margin as is possible.