'We' review: Arcade Fire makes a welcome return to form

Win Butler of Arcade Fire at the Coachella Music & Arts Festival 2022. The band's latest album marks a welcome return to its trademark apocalyptic good cheer. – Photos: AP

Though the threat of apocalypse has long loomed large throughout their discography, Arcade Fire's driving energy has, by contrast, always been found in songs that invite us to embrace the full-throated catharsis that comes from remembering we're alive.

While just over a decade ago, Win Butler was lamenting the fantasized loss of San Francisco and singing about packing it in, on Arcade Fire's superb new sixth album, it appears things have only gotten worse. Now it's all of California he imagines being lost, but despite the devastation, Butler concedes that it's "not half bad" in the opening minutes of a dazzling new suite entitled End of the Empire I-IV.