Blasphemy, necrophilia, cannibalism, date rape, intravenous drug use, playing a trumpet after jamming it into someoneвЂ™s butt and trying to catch fish with clumps of your own vomit-itвЂ™s all here, rapped in the bureaucratic hum of someone ordering an omelet. DeusnerДЄt some point I have to believe that what bothered people about the violence in EarlвЂ™s music wasnвЂ™t how serious it sounded but how casual. But he doesnвЂ™t let the song end until he implicates his listener: вЂњO and all you folks, you come to see, you just stand there in the glass looking at me,вЂќ he sings, pouring what he can of his heart out. Instead, вЂњZulaвЂќ, with its fiddle eddies and synth smears that sound like pedal steels floating in space, uses heartache and despair as a jumping off point for a tender-hearted rumination on the efficacy of pop music: Can a song express the infinite gradations of heartache and despair? Or are even the best and most popular love songs simply inadequate vessels? Expecting no clear answers, Houck finds none. Houck isnвЂ™t trying to join their ranks (he is as reverent toward his heroes as he is ambitious in his music). In two short lines he alludes specifically to Bette MidlerвЂ™s вЂњThe RoseвЂќ and Johnny CashвЂ™s вЂњRing of FireвЂќ, two love songs famous for not sugarcoating the dark and torturous aspects of romance. вЂњSome say love is a burning thing, that it makes a fiery ring,вЂќ Matthew Houck sings by way of introducing вЂњSong for ZulaвЂќ, the beating, aching heart of his career-best LP Muchacho. But the worry is essential to understanding ourselves right now. They probably won't destroy us, or our ability to find one another entre le royaume, des vivants et des morts-in fact, future generations will surely regard this fear as quaint. It's not a spiteful rejection or a superior warning, but an apprehension: We don't know yet whether our Internet-fuelled fears of isolation, abandonment, and insincerity will truly amount to anything.

'Reflektor''s contradictions-much like the social tech it criticizes-embody the existential anxiety that has come to define this generation as it struggles to distinguish good from evil in the cloud-based darkness.

On the title track, vocalists Win Butler and RГ©gine Chassagne are practically exuberant in their fruitless search for 'a connector' to truly bridge the gap between people, lamenting our digital lives for the alienation they breed while simultaneously making an impact because of them. As Lindsay Zoladz aptly noted in her review of their glitteringly fretful fourth album Reflektor, there is irony laced throughout the record's very existence, considering it streamed on YouTube before receiving a physical release. Of all the musical technophobes to flourish in this digitally fraught era, Arcade Fire are perhaps the only act to condemn futurism while simultaneously embracing its trappings. Like the potential new love the song haltingly describes, this one's an across-the-room infatuation that turns out to be a keeper. out,' the applause doesn't express release. In a dynamic that's similar to the one animating her near-contemporary FKA twigs, when Kelela coos that 'I need to let it. Plenty of songs these past several years have been based around a steady handclap. So we're left with that Cassie-esque tendril of a voice, wispily curling upward like cigarette smoke, and a UK house-minded futurist's sleek, pillowy interior decorating. When the Kelela-fronted 'Bank Head' first surfaced, ahead of Kingdom's Vertical XL EP, it made clear this D.C.-bred, L.A.-based singer was an artist too formidable to fade into the backdrop 'Bank Head' later showed up on her own head-turning Cut 4 Me and Solange's #BrandyDeepCuts-realizing Saint Heron compilation. The Los Angeles-based underground bass impresario once used vocals as just another percussive element to mangle with electronics, as can be heard on both sides of his still-vital 2010 ' Mindreader'/' You' 12' single. That each record was excellent is probably not a coincidence. Kingdom and Kelela's 'Bank Head' was on no fewer than three EPs, albums, or mixtapes last year, and that's not counting the instrumental version.

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