Journal of Popular Music Studies, Volume 27, Issue 1, Pages 4868

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City: Mapping Arcade

Fires Reflektor and its Intermedia
Promotional Campaign1
Brian Fauteux

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Music is the cultural form best able both to cross borderssounds

carry across fences and walls and oceans, across classes, races, and
nationsand to define places: in clubs, scenes, and raves, listening
on headphones, radio, and in the concert hall, we are only where the
music takes us (Frith 276).
On 1 August 2013, a mysterious Instagram account initiated the
ambitious multimedia, multiplatform promotional campaign for Arcade
Fires new single and album of the same name: Reflektor. As the campaign
unfolded it grew to include a Saturday Night Live (SNL) performance,
a number of YouTube teaser trailers, Twitter posts, a late-night NBC
special that followed the SNL appearance called Here Comes the Night
Time, and a low-quality album stream leaked intentionally by the band
(see Wheeler). The promotional campaign reflects an increasingly mobile
and interconnected listening and viewing experience of popular culture,
in which excess and ubiquity are keys to success. But the campaign is
much more than a succession of digital sounds and images. Early in the
Reflektor campaign, a series of Instagram photos hinted at the significance of
9 PM 9/9. The date and time in question not only marked the release of
the video for the albums first single, Reflektor, but more significantly,
a secret show by the band, billed not as Arcade Fire but instead as an
unknown band, The Reflektors. Before this The Reflektors played a series
of less-publicized shows in Montreal. These live performances anchored
the campaign as it unfolded and intensified, highlighting the persistent
significance and centrality of local sites of production and exhibition in
popular music-making and promotion.
Montreal and New York City were the first two locations for The
Reflektors shows and both cities are noteworthy sites of production and

C

2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

49

performance for Arcade Fire. This article explores how these cities occupy
a strong presence throughout the campaign, signaling cosmopolitanism, and
the carnivalesque. Sounds of the cosmopolitan city are linked to Arcade
Fires increasing accolades and career trajectory. With Reflektor, Arcade
Fire draws similarities to other popular rock bands that have turned to a
more global sound as their careers progressed (Remain in Light by Talking
Heads, for instance). The cosmopolitan city also parallels recent shifts in the
music industries that afford artists a variety of methods for producing and
distributing music, such as using social media platforms to release music or
connect with fans. It is a site characterized by pluralism and fluid boundaries,
themes shared in common with Carnival, a public celebration that typically
occurs before Lent in numerous places across the world. The carnival theme
recurs throughout the Reflektor campaign and signifies both the inversion of
hierarchiesin this case the barriers between performer and audience member and the masking of Arcade Fire by The Reflektorsand complicated
issues of cultural appropriation. The sounds of the cosmopolitan city and the
carnival serve as key esthetic markers for the bands style on Reflektor and
embody the complex relationship between the local and universal. Digital
circulation often evokes ideas of universality and ubiquity, but a noticeable
attention to place is just as important a mark of the digital age.

The Intermedia Promotional Campaign

Reflektor, a double LP with a running time of 85:10 (including a

hidden track), is Arcade Fires most ambitious release thus far. The album
debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 140,000 copies in its
first week, continuing the success and accolades generated by the bands
Grammy award-winning The Suburbs (2011), which also debuted at number
one. Although the band released Reflektor with long-time label Merge
Records, Universal Music Group distributes the album. Previous albums
have distribution deals with Alternative Distribution Alliance, Warner
Musics indie distribution arm. Another noted change in the world of
Arcade Fire is a partnership with Capitol Records for radio promotion
(Caulfield). In response to these business decisions, Chris Molanphy of
Pitchfork exclaims, Major distribution? Radio promotion?! These are
uncharted waters for Arcade Fire, and virtually any band on Merge. The
band is having its cred and eating it too (Molanphy). By remaining with
Merge and establishing partnerships with majors, Reflektor represents an
in-between album, symbolizing tensions, transformations, and fluidity in

50

Brian Fauteux

not just a musical and technological moment that is anything but certain,
but also its surrounding political economy.
Transition becomes a significant theme that runs throughout reviews
of the album. Lorraine Carpenter, a writer for the Montreal-based CultMTL,
hints at this theme of transition, claiming that listeners will notice that the
big-band dynamic is still there, complete with violin, sax and congas, but
some of their new material is fitted with slower tempos and languid grooves
. . . But variety brings new dynamics to the mix, and to the mood (Carpenter,
Heres Why). Of course, a band experimenting with and integrating new
influences to its sound and style is nothing new, or specific to Arcade Fire,
but discourses of transition and variety become connected to the bands
business relationships as well as their music.
The Reflektor promotional campaign can be difficult to map, and that
is just the point. It embodies cultures high and low, industries and media new
and old, and spaces both local and global. Before the albums release, the
campaign occupied a number of social media outlets using Instagram posts
and Twitter updates to connect fans with short videos consisting of recent
concert footage, or images of carnivals set to audio clips from the new album.
Early in the campaign a short video posted to thereflektors.com depicted a
persons hand writing out the letters of Reflektor in an encircled diamond
shape set to a discordant, atmospheric soundscape. These same Reflektor
logos were found on sidewalks and walls in select cities. Also building
anticipation was the music video for Reflektor, directed by Anton Corbijn.
Upon the release of the video, Stereogum writer Miles Bowe commented
that, despite being a little jaded from the tornado of hype thats gone on
today, you may find it pretty damn incredible. The whole thing is so big, so
weird, so overwhelmingly stylish, and beautiful, not to mention its all shot
in that stark black and white that made Corbijn iconic (Bowe). Corbijn is
a big name in the fields of photography, music video, and film direction,
having photographed Joy Division, directed Nirvanas Heart Shaped Box
video as well as the 2007 Ian Curtis biopic, Control. His presence certainly
hints at the campaigns high aspirations.
One of the more novel components of the campaign is the latenight, NBC television special, Here Comes the Night Time (directed by
Roman Coppola), which first aired following the bands Saturday Night Live
performance on 28 September 2013.2 The special is primarily comprised of
the live performances from the bands series of secret shows in Montreal,
in which masked and costumed attendees dance along to the new music.
Performance footage takes viewers onstage with the band members, who

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

51

are wearing face paint and matching suits and dresses, as new music is
previewed (specifically the songs Here Comes the Night Time, We Exist,
and Normal Person). The camera also moves into and weaves through the
tightly packed crowd, which at times executes partially choreographed dance
routines. Concert footage is intercut with short humorous skits and reveals a
community television esthetic as it accidently airs brief clips from a sitcom
starring comedian and actor Aziz Ansari. The low quality, DIY esthetic of
the special is contrasted by the involvement of high-profile celebrities such
as Bono, Ben Stiller, James Franco, and Michael Cera. Concurrently, the
special offers a preview of music to come, while also aligning the band with
the star power and cultural credibility of Hollywood actors and successful
musicians.
The extensive parameters of the campaign suggest that it is no
longer enough to simply promote music through the channels offered to
and preferred by big industry players (such as Arcade Fires star-studded
NBC special and the SNL performance), nor to only draw upon avenues
in line with more independent means for circulating and promoting music
(philosophically and practically), such as word of mouth or relying on a great
review from an independent music blog rich in cultural capital. Instead, the
campaign reflects being in the midst of a messy yet exciting moment when
new promotional practices are being tested against big industry methods
for circulating music. The campaign makes room for the conflation of an
unknown band, The Reflektors, and the Grammy Award-winning Arcade
Fire. Ones ability to discover that The Reflektors are indeed Arcade Fire
is a key characteristic of the promotional campaign, signifying a culture of
instant news, the perceived importance of hipness, and a heightened sense
of connectivity within which the campaign functions.
A series of innovative promotional campaigns for major album
releases have both preceded and followed Reflektor. These campaigns point
to new promotional practices of the contemporary music industries that
extend beyond Arcade Fire. For example, in 2011 a short-film-as-musicvideo trend was especially predominant, one that Arcade Fire was a part
of with Scenes From the Suburbs, a half-hour short film directed by Spike
Jonze. That same year, the Beastie Boys released Fight for Your Right
Revisited, a short film that showcases the coming together of various
media forms and cultural moments (Kanye Wests Runaway is another
notable example from 2011). In R. Colin Taits discussion of Fight for
Your Right Revisited, he explains that the music videos resiliency through
its transformation from the once-dominant MTV music video format to the

52

Brian Fauteux

online, internet video has actually created an even stronger form of media,
ushering in a renaissance of works where music artists have embraced
virality and consolidated their power as producers and directors of these
short works. The short film embodies the new convergent logic of viral
videos and contemporary advertising (Tait). Similarly to Here Comes the
Night Time, the Beastie Boys film features major celebrities such as Elijah
Wood, Seth Rogen, and Will Ferrell, celebrities who play either young or
old versions of the band, which is symbolic of the ways in which it bridges
music video forms of the past and present. The films myriad components
make the lines between original, extratextual, paratextual and hypertextual
difficult to discern, according to Tait. He adds that the film is the sum
total of all of these references as well as a hub which points outward to many
more, a point that is indicative of a cultural and technological moment that
lends itself well to a multiplatform, multimedia promotional campaign that
matches music with film and musicians with actors.
A handful of prominent artists attempted innovative promotional
campaigns for their new albums in 2013. In fact, 2013 was dubbed The
Year of the Album-Release Stunt by Rolling Stone magazine. Arcade Fire
was profiled by the magazine alongside Daft Punk and Jay Z as artists
who used inventive or unusual promotional tactics for their album releases.
Daft Punk began promoting Random Access Memories by distributing
unlabeled posters showing stark images of the robots heads and by airing
a 15 second teaser trailer on Saturday Night Live. A second trailer was
shown at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California
(Marchese). Anticipation increased following the launch of the albums first
single, Get Lucky, and continued until the albums premier in Wee Waa,
Australia (Marchese). Jay Zs Magna Carta . . . Holy Grail was announced
to basketball fans in a Samsung-sponsored television advertisement during
Junes NBA finals. The album was available before its release date as a
free download for Samsung Galaxy subscribers. Beyonce ended 2013 by
releasing her fifth studio album overnight (via a video posted to Instagram)
and without any warning or promotion, an innovative promotional stunt
in itself. The album was released exclusively by iTunes and each song
includes its own music video. Promotional campaigns of this magnitude have
partnered major bands and pop stars with big business and tested innovative
technological methods for promoting and distributing music. What remains
central to these innovative campaigns, however, is the prominence of place.
Coachella and Wee Waa are integral to Daft Punks campaign and a
significant part of Jay Zs contemporary star power has to do with his

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

53

involvement in the Brooklyn Nets and the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Locations persist within the multimedia and multiplatform musical universe.
Central to Arcade Fires Reflektor and its surrounding campaign is the
cosmopolitan city, namely Montreal and New York, two significant sites
of production and performance.

Reflektor and the Cosmopolitan City

Arcade Fires Reflektor campaign overwhelms all channels of

communication and ensures a presence on the multiplicity of platforms
through which todays music fan interacts with music on a daily basis,
both in-person and online. But the campaign also prominently emphasizes
local sites of production and exhibition in popular music making. More
importantly, as evidenced by The Reflektors secret shows, the campaign
incorporates cosmopolitan cities with rich and diverse cultural and musical
histories, primarily Montreal and New York. The cosmopolitan city, heard
and seen in both the campaign and the bands current sound and style, is
the new location in a series of Arcade Fire albums that foreground placea
Montreal borough on Funeral (2004), a rural Quebec church-turned-studio
on Neon Bible (2007), and the Houston suburbs on The Suburbs (2011).
The cosmopolitan city can be traced to cosmopolitanism the
concept, one that intervenes in analyses that bind political and cultural
relations between people and society to nation states and to the ideologies
of nationalism and patriotism. The concept claims detachment from
the bonds, commitments, and affiliations that constrain ordinary nationbound lives (Robbins 1) and, thus, cosmopolitanism helps us to think
about the ways in which popular music making and promotion function
in the digital age. Striving to push beyond the banality of Foucaults
heterotopic excursion (Harvey 538) and Kants cosmopolitanism, which
plagued the inception of national ideology with racial prejudgment
(Mignolo 736), more contemporary applications align cosmopolitanism with
dialectic processes and pluralities. Identities, local and otherwise, involve
plural nationalities, challenging the dominance of patriotic identity in modern nation states (Beck 76). Cosmopolitanism calls into question modernist
nationalisms and their tendency to connect cultures and identities to specific
places. This tendency has been critiqued as a retrograde ideology in a world
deterritorialized by migration, mediatization, and capital flows (Pollock
et al. 579). Key themes of cosmopolitanism include plurality, universality,
displacement, relations between the local and global, and social and cultural

54

Brian Fauteux

experiences between people, cultural products, and modes and methods

of production. Impressively, music also involves all of these elements.
There exists an intriguing parallel between a transition from nationalism
to cosmopolitanism(s) and recent shifts in the music industries. Formerly,
controlled top-down by those who owned the chain of production, music
industries today enable a kind of freewheeling liberty that Arcade Fire
demonstrates through the Reflektor campaign. Yet, as with cosmopolitanism,
contemporary music industries suffer from class difficulties and cultural
inequalities, particularly in the age of globalized capital.
Writing on world music, a sound indicative of cosmopolitanism,
Steven Feld (2000) highlights this very tension of musical globalization as
experienced and narrated as equally celebratory and contentious because
everyone can hear equally omnipresent signs of augmented and diminished
musical diversity (146). Felds more recent book on jazz cosmopolitanism
in Accra, Ghana (2012) illustrates the embodied, lived, uneven, and
complicated nature of cosmopolitanism, suggesting that the term implies
more than some heady abstraction floating in the banalizing academic ink
pool alongside globalization or identity (7). Reflektor, an album that
evokes the cosmopolitan city, accounts for both the progressive connections
and problematic tensions that are implicated in conflations of the global and
the local.
Much more than an amalgamation of tastes and ethnicities,
cosmopolitanism reflects the various cultural practices and experiences that
take place at different space-times, connected in and throughout the local, the
global, the present, and the past. This argument is a central thrust of Martin
Allors exploration of Montreals Boulevard Saint-Laurent (commonly
referred to as The Main), which nicely connects cosmopolitanism to the
cosmopolitan city. Allor argues for foregrounding the necessity of linking
the analysis of the practices of cultural consumption to the location of sites
of cultural activity in particular vectors of the local and the global and of the
sedimented past and the becoming of cultural agents (46). An emphasis on
the need for different conceptualizations of a cultural future less beholden
to the story of a single national culture encapsulates the nature of The
Main as a 24 hour street, one with a daily cycle encompassing different
moments which involve different peoples and different practices (Allor
4849). We experience popular music along similar lines as the 24 hour
cosmopolitan city, as a listener is never able to express pleasure or distaste for
a piece of music as divorced from an accumulation of songs heard, of value
judgments made, and cultural experiences had. Musical taste results from the

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

55

accumulation of affective experiences and memories, the concerts we attend,

the songs we hear, and the performing and practicing of an instrument.
Like the cosmopolitan city, ones musical orientation is much more than
a representative sample of tastes or of musical and cultural preferences.
Simon Frith argues that if value judgments in popular culture make their
own claims to objectivity (to being rooted, that is, in the quality of objects),
their subjectivity cant be denied eithernot, however, by banal reference
to people having their own (essentially irrational) likes and dislikes, but
because such judgments are taken to tell us something about the person
making them (Frith 4). Subjectivities and experiences from different times
and places are paramount to understanding a listeners relationship with
popular music, just as they are fundamental to the diversity and plurality of
the cosmopolitan city.
The cosmopolitan city looms large in popular imaginary, the site for
which the debates and discourses outlined above unfold. Popular culture is
constituted along the lines by which people traverse and experience the city.
Through music and film, the cosmopolitan city challenges us to think and
rethink the limits of culture, politics, technology, and the self. While other
cities can be located in the Reflektor campaign, Montreal and New York
are especially central, each doubling as a significant site of production for
Arcade Fire.
Montreal, the bands home, is the site of the first shows by The
Reflektors in early September 2013. A review of the 9 September not-sosecret show at Salsath`eque (a salsa club, not a rock venue) describes the
performance as the (local) climax of an elaborate viral marketing campaign
for their new single Reflektor (Carpenter, All About). The Salsath`eque
shows are the basis of the aforementioned late-night NBC special, Here
Comes the Night Time (the cosmopolitan city doesnt sleep), as well as for a
number of teaser videos for select songs, the album, and the television special
itself. For example, one teaser posted to the Vice YouTube channel includes
crowd footage from a Salsath`eque show with one individual costumed as a
skeleton in the forefront. Written in neon blue, Arcade Fire in Here Comes
the Night Time flashes over the course of the 15 second video. The teaser
promotes the television special and the prerecorded material from the inperson live performance entices the viewer. Salsath`eque is a significant
site that travels through the campaign and the venues significance to
communicating the cosmopolitan city is made evident by the fact that Arcade
Fire played a salsa club, as opposed to one of the many smaller indie rock
venues for which Montreal is known.

56

Brian Fauteux

Following the 9 September secret show at Salsath`eque in Montreal,

Carpenter notes the Haitian influences that have been added to the bands
look and sound, which are significant for locating the cosmopolitan city in
Reflektor and its campaign. Both the SNL performance and the late night
special call attention to this expanded sound, as the stage is especially
crowded (even for an Arcade Fire show) with former core member Sarah
Neufeld, frequent collaborator Owen Pallett, a horn section featuring
Colin Stetson, and added percussionists Diol Edmond and Tiwill Duprate.
Carpenter claims that it is no surprise that Arcade Fire has embarked on
this esthetic turn given the bands long relationship with Haiti (Carpenter
All About). The band and the city of Montreal are both connected to
Haiti. Montreals Haitian community is the largest in Canada and Arcade
Fire multi-instrumentalist and singer Regine Chassagne, whose parents
emigrated from Haiti, has advocated the countrys need for aid following
the 2010 earthquake, among other Haiti-related activities (see Chassagne).
The struggles of modern day Haiti are heard on Reflektors Here Comes the
Night Time (a song that begins with voices and music sourced from Haitis
annual Carnival and features a percussion-heavy breakdown), particularly
a critique of the ineffectiveness of religious missionaries. According to a
Rolling Stone interview with lead singer Win Butler, many missionaries are
not actively working with Haitians but are rather there to paint houses and
teach people about God. Butler explains that he feels as though the work of
the missionaries is misguided because of the deep knowledge and belief that
many Haitians already have in God (Doyle). This frustration comes across
on Here Comes the Night Time when Butler sings: The missionaries,
they tell us well be left behind/weve been left behind a thousand times,
a thousand times. Countries become connected through song. The sounds
of the diasporas are the sounds of the cosmopolitan city.
In her review of the album, Carpenter expresses that strains of dub
and rara and Afrobeat are used sparingly but definitely help set a tone for the
record (Carpenter, Heres Why). She notes that in and around the bands
recording sessionswhich took place in studios and spaces in Jamaica,
Montreal, Lousiana, and New Yorkvarious members travelled to Carnival
in Trinidad and visited Haiti, Regines parents home country, a place that
Arcade Fire has aligned with via musical tributes. Band member Richard
Reed Parry explains that there are a bunch of Haitian percussionists that
play on this record. The band started recording the album in Jamaica and
had taken trips to Haiti and some of us had been over to Carnival in Trinidad,
and seen the, like, 80-person steel orchestras, and just absorbing some

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

57

Caribbean things. Having those Haitian musicians come and lend a different
percussionistic feel really changes things up. But were not trying to make
Graceland (Carpenter, Heres Why). On the one hand, Parrys comments
emphasize the accumulation of Caribbean sounds and styles in the recording
of Reflektor. On the other, he is careful to distance the album from Paul
Simons Graceland (1986), an album that stands out in popular music history
as being central to debates about cultural exchange and cultural imperialism
(Tangari). The Graceland connection points to a perceived tradition of rock
bands going somewhere as their careers progress (Beatles, Rolling Stones,
Talking Heads, and U2). Carl Wilson discusses this trajectory in his Reflektor
review for Slate, noting that this progression is not always about going
primitive, but rather more about a push towards a stylistic change. On
the issue of cultural appropriation, Wilson suggests that the trouble with
Arcade Fires Haitian influences is that they are applied too gingerly. The
assumption is that theyre too smart and tasteful to appropriate too blatantly
(Wilson). Parrys comments work to convince readers and listeners that the
bands expanded sound is a result of authentic cultural experiences (Wilson
also claims that Arcade Fire have a weakness for idealizing authenticity).
Through these comments the band both admits to and distances itself from
the suggestion of cultural appropriation, a process that is emblematic of
evoking the cosmopolitan city through music.
Reflektor was also recorded partially at DFA Studio in New York
City (the quintessential American cosmopolitan city) with James Murphy
(of LCD Soundsystem). New York, specifically Brooklyn, is the location of
two back-to-back secret Reflektors shows that, amongst other things, carried
the campaign into satellite radio through heavy promotion by independent
music channel Sirius XMU (also based in New York City). Arcade Fire
cites Murphys far-reaching and diverse musical taste as a key reason for
working with the producer. The bands love for LCD Soundsystems music
is another. Commenting on LCD Soundsystem, Parry explains, If we had
to say who our favorite contemporary band was, that would probably be
it. When we saw them on the Sound of Silver tour, it was the best show
(Carpenter, Heres Why). Parry mentions Murphys super-diverse, wide,
and extremely excitable taste in music and adds that it was great to have
someone whose specialty is dance music on board for the new dance songs
on Reflektor. Diversity and variety, both key components of the cosmopolitan
city, are clearly present in the production choices behind the album.
Reflektor sounds like New York, the ultimate cosmopolitan city and
the site of massively significant moments and movements in popular music

58

Brian Fauteux

history. Artists who are cited in reviews as standout influences on Reflektor

evoke a New York as heard through the coming together of sounds and styles
both distant and local at key moments in the citys musical history. Examples
include proto-punk in the mid 1960s to mid 1970s and the subsequent new
wave scene of New Yorks CBGB. David Bowies backing vocals on the
single Reflektor are applicable here, as are the Talking Heads comparisons,
a parallel that The Atlantic Wire critic Zach Schonfeld feels has been made
ad nauseam (Schonfeld). Reviews highlight the sounds of disco and the
famous Studio 54 of a late 1970s New York City. Win Butler describes
the bands new sound as a mash up of Studio 54 and Haitian voodoo
(Pelly). Diversity and variety are again present in reviews and discussions
of Reflektor, connected, in this case, to New York City.
Following the Montreal and Brooklyn shows The Reflektors
continued the series of secret shows in other cities including Los
Angeles and Miamis Little Haiti neighborhood, with funds from the
performances donated to Partners in Health and the neighborhoods cultural
center. These subsequent shows are not as integral to the campaign itself
because they were not used as source material for additional promotional
material. However, the shows continued the hype and momentum up to the
albums release date of 29 October 2013, which was then followed by a
European leg of the promotional tour.
What does it mean, then, to evoke the cosmopolitan city through
sound? Part of a cosmopolitan sound is the fact that genres in contemporary
popular music are increasingly fluid. Win Butler, commenting on the
increasing prevalence of genre-less taste today says that the joy of making
music in 2013 is youre allowed to like Sex Pistols and ABBA and thats
fine (Pelly). But recall, the cosmopolitan city is much more than a melange
of tastes and cultures; it also evokes paths through and between different
space-times and locations. Both cultural and material capital are required for
navigating and traversing the global and weaving it through the local and this
is a privilege attainable through a successful career. Arcade Fires cultural
accolades and accomplishments (The Suburbs won the Polaris, the Juno,
and the Grammy for best album) are instrumental in this transition from the
suburbs to the cultural and musical diversity produced by the cosmopolitan
city. Trips to Haiti and visits to carnivals become visual components of
the campaign and of the sound and style of Reflektor. One short clip, in
particular, titled The Reflektors, includes images from Carnival in Jacmel.
It begins with nighttime footage in the streets and a close-up of a Haitian
license plate on a scooter. The clip continues to cut between the encircleddiamond Reflektor logo and daytime shots of costumed and elaborately

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

59

masked carnival-goers, including what appear to be a devil or a demon and

an individual with snakes for hair (The Reflektors.).
Cosmopolitanism, according to Jennie Germann Molz, refers to
an intellectual skill, an esthetic savoir faire, and an affective pleasure
in experiencing and navigating through cultural difference (35). An
intellectual skill and a refined esthetic palate are components of cultural
capital, a term that Pierre Bourdieu used to outline systems of cultural
distinction and symbolic exchange. Cultural capital is the reflection of ones
capacity to navigate and critique cultural experiences. The fluid geographic,
aesthetic, cultural, and technological boundaries of Reflektor as an album
and a campaign are representative of the bands increased cultural capital.
In addition to winning major awards and partnering with major labels, the
band has, for the most part, avoided claims of selling out. Pitchfork, a
music blog that functions as a predominant cultural gatekeeper for new
music, granted Reflektor a rating of 9.2 out of 10 and the prestigious
Best New Music label (a label Arcade Fire has received for each of
its four full-length albums) (Zoladz). According to the online review
aggregator Metacritic.com, however, Reflektor also garnered Arcade Fire
more negative reviews than its past full-length releases. Writing for The A.V.
Club, Josh Modell says that At first only its faultsand more importantly,
its departuresstand out: It feels dull, overlong, indulgent, and detached
(Modell). Negative reviews are perhaps indicative of overexposure caused
by the extensiveness and intensity of the promotional campaign, an issue
that will be expanded on below.
Narratives of travel and experience carry throughout the Reflektor
campaign, including the reviews of the album and its songs and interviews
with band members. Win Butler discusses the influence that visiting Haiti
had on the albums sound and lyrics in a Rolling Stone interview. I was
learning from what I saw and applying it to my own life, lyrically, he
says, adding, Im not trying to tell other peoples stories. Were just trying
to allow an experience to change you (Doyle). Butlers account becomes
more descriptive when mentioning Carnival in Jacmel, recalling his time
on a beach at three in the morning, and there was a voodoo drummer
playing, and he had been dancing for like, 4 hours with kids and teenagers
and they started to get the spirit . . . It really kind of makes you feel like a
hack being in a rock band, having musical experiences like that (Doyle).
Jacmels Carnival, according to Butlers account, represents a space of
transcendence and experience. Reflektor marks an esthetic and conceptual
turn that expands the bands sound, style, and broader mythology. It is an

60

Brian Fauteux

effective and evocative turn because it expands the bands sonic boundaries,
a move that is symbolic of the bands increased cultural capital, but also one
that keeps Arcade Fire rooted in place. Reflektor communicates a place of
places, the cosmopolitan city.
The Cosmopolitan City and the Carnival

A consequence of the cosmopolitan citys pluralism is excess. Excess

connects Reflektors promotional campaign to the cosmopolitan city and it
is explicit through the recurring theme of the carnival. The campaign
saturates a wide range of media outlets just as the citys carnival overwhelms
the senses. A multiplatform, intermedia campaign is a modern carnival
steeped in excess with humor and hyperbole unfolding in reviews, reader
comments, tweets, and blog posts. In person at the secret shows, concertgoers were required to be costumed and masked. Win Butler, citing the
Carnival in Jacmel, says that the act of wearing a mask and dancing in a
crowd leads to what he feels to be a whole inversion of society. He points
to feeling less of a break between the spirit and the body, and sex and death
not being completely unrelated. [You] just kind of feel like a more whole
person, I guess (Doyle).
The carnival symbolizes both the inversion of social hierarchies as
well as the transnational circulation of sounds and styles. Bakhtins notion
of the carnivalesque stems from his thoughts on the medieval carnival,
one that suggests the destruction of the distinction between actors and
spectators. Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in
it, and everyone participates, because its idea embraces all people (78).
Bakhtin pointed to the importance of the mask, the most complex
theme of folk culture, a theme connected with the joy of change and
reincarnation, with gay relativity and with the merry negation of uniformity
and similarity . . . The mask is related to transition, metamorphoses, the
violation of natural boundaries, to mockery and familiar nicknames (40).
In addition to the masked audiences at the secret shows, the masking of
Arcade Fire by The Reflektors represents the inversion of the cultural capital
accredited to the band, choosing instead to mount a promotional campaign
as a new and unheard-of act. A similar carnivalesque move was executed by
the Beatles for the 1967 album Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, on
which the band members replaced themselves with the imaginary group
of the title (Kohl 85). Of significance is the fact that this inversion came
at a time when the Beatles most effectively severed the line between high

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

61

art and popular entertainment and garnered serious critical appraisal and
praise (Kohl 87). A cosmopolitan sound seems to stem not only from
the accumulation of cultural capital but also an increase in popularity and
prominence. The mask becomes a means by which to prevent popularity
from overshadowing credibility.
The cosmopolitan city and the carnival enable the inversion of
cultural distinctions and, thus, the coming together of musical sounds
and styles across time and space. As an agent of inversion, the carnival
highlights the ways in which globalization is a complex, two-way process
that includes counter-flows from the periphery-to-center. Keith Nurse details
the far-reaching influence the Trinidad carnival has had on carnivals in
other cities across the globe (663). He states that Almost every major
city in North America and Britain has a Caribbean style carnival that is in
large part modeled after the one found in Trinidad (Nurse 661). Carnivals
of the Americas demonstrate the potential to embody rituals of social
protest that critique and parody the process of enforced hybridization and
transculturation embedded in colonial and neocolonial society (Nurse 667).
But as carnivals become more commercialized, internationalized, and
ethnically pluralistic, there are instances where carnivals reflect institutionalized social hierarchies, suffering from racial and sexual stigma,
heightened surveillance (Nurse 671, 676). Positioning the carnival within
a contemporary popular musical album must not only acknowledge the
productive aspects of celebrating the inversion of social hierarchies, the
pleasures of dance and movement, and the blurring of cultural and musical
boundaries, but also complicated issues of cultural appropriation and the
industrial and economic impetus behind the production of culture.
A number of well-founded concerns about cultural appropriation and
misrepresentation followed in the wake of the albums release. Such concerns
are raised in an Atlantic piece by Hayden Higgins, who points to the potential
for audiences to not understand the source and origin of the Haitian sounds
and styles in the Reflektor campaign as problematic. Higgins has a point.
Confusion about cultural influences can be problematic, particularly when
origins are incorrectly mapped onto the agents with more cultural clout. One
example he offers is a certain Mashable.com post that incorrectly assumes
that Arcade Fire created Marcel Camus Black Orpheus (Higgins). The
1959 film, which takes place during Brazils Carnival, plays alongside the
early leak of Reflektor. Higgins explains that he was originally unsure of
what the campaigns accompanying imagery meant, but discovered that the
designs were inspired by Haitian veve graffiti, used in syncretistic Vodoun

62

Brian Fauteux

practices to summon the Loa (angels or spirits, messengers to the deity).

Higgins argues that when such images are presented out of context, they
connote something else: mystery, exoticness, esotericism, and that this
is done to grab attention and profit. However, by engaging with a process
of discovering the cultural origin of these sounds and styles through his
article, Higgins also contradicts the central thrust of his argument, that of
the audiences inability to grasp the complexities of cultural and musical
influences. It is also problematic to predict how an audience might engage
with music, especially when one assumes simplicity. There are numerous
ways through which cultural influences travel back and forth between artists,
their influences, and their fans. These complexities and their associated
problems and tensions are also the complexities inherent to the cosmopolitan
city, and no doubt of the relations between Arcade Fire, Haiti, and Montreal.
Well before Reflektors release, Arcade Fire was used as an example
by Sasha Frere-Jones in a New Yorker piece from October 2007 on
the disappearance of African-American influences in indie rock music.
Commenting on a live performance from Arcade Fires Neon Bible tour,
Frere-Jones wrote, And what I really wanted to hear, after a stretch of
raucous sing-alongs, was a bit of swing, some empty space, and palpable bass
frequenciesin other words, attributes of African-American popular music
(Frere-Jones, A Paler). He added that Its difficult to talk about the racial
pedigree of American pop music without being accused of reductionism,
essentialism, or worse, and such suspicion is often warranted. Arcade Fires
Will Butler (Wins brother) responded to Frere-Jones article and attached an
MP3 that included parts of the bands songs that steal quite blatantly from
black peoples music from all over the globe (Frere-Jones, Thats All).
Butler encouraged Frere-Jones to not ignore the Latin element in rockand-roll history and to not forget that miscegenation need [not] be across
color lines. He used the example of Joanna Newsom who is stealing Old
World folk-style music and mixing it with American Folk, which is partly
white and partly black and partly mysterious. This exchange illustrates that
mapping musical and cultural influences is not totalizing or objective. In this
case, the creator and the critic locate different influences and use different
words and terms to make sense of the ways in which different artists and
genres acknowledge and understand their influences.
What is perhaps most applicable from Nurses analysis of the
Trinidad carnival is that it offers an interesting parallel between the place
of the carnival in global popular culture and the place of the cosmopolitan
city in Arcade Fires Reflektor. Nurse explains that the globalization of

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

63

Trinidad carnival needs to be viewed as a dual process: the first relates to the
localization of global influences and the second involves the globalization
of local impulses (682). Therefore, Trinidads carnival is based upon the
localization of global influences and the exportation of carnival to overseas
diasporic communities represents the globalization of the local (Nurse 682).
Similar relationships between the global and the local are present in the ways
in which sounds and styles, both global and local and both past and present,
come together in the production, performance, and promotion of the album.
In the case of Reflektor, sounds of the carnival and the connections and
complexities between Montreal and Haiti are instrumental in the albums
sound and style, as are the cosmopolitan cities chosen for the first two
secret shows by The Reflektorsthe shows that anchor the multimedia,
multiplatform promotional campaign, and illustrate the prominence of place
in popular music production, and performance in the digital age.

Reflection

Kierkegaards The Present Age (1846) offers a reflection on

reflection, a critique of what he called the reflective age, a cultural moment
determined by the press and the notion of a public, void of passion and
action. In contrast to a revolutionary age, an age of action, the reflective
age is the age of advertisement and publicity. Nothing ever happens but
there is immediate publicity everywhere (Kierkegaard 35). The reflective
age is one of envy and it has lost all feeling for the values of eros, for
enthusiasm and sincerity in politics and religion, or for piety, admiration,
and domesticity in everyday life (Kierkegaard 39). Kierkegaard positioned
the press as being able to create that abstraction the public, consisting
of unreal individuals who never are and never can be united in an actual
situation or organization, in part, because the sense of association in
society is no longer strong enough to give life to concrete realties (60).
All that is concrete is destroyed in the reflective and passionless age. The
public becomes on the look-out for distraction, desirous for something
to gossip about, and the people write and talk anonymously (Kierkegaard
65, 76). Kierkegaards critique of the age of reflection can appropriately
extend into the digital age, with the online expansive flow of expressions
of envy, the spread of gossip, anonymity, and the prevalence of critique and
contrarianism over passion and action.
Win Butler cites The Present Age as a source of inspiration for
Reflektor. He says that it sounds as though Kierkegaard is talking about

64

Brian Fauteux

modern times. Hes talking about the press and alienation, and you kind of
read it and youre like, Dude, you have no idea how insane its gonna get
(Doyle). Butler continues,
He basically compares the reflective age to a passionate age. Like,
if there was a piece of gold out on thin ice, in a passionate age, if
someone went to try and get the gold, everyone would cheer them on
and be like, Go for it! Yeah you can do it! And in a reflective age,
if someone tried to walk out on the thin ice, everyone would criticize
them and say, What an idiot! I cant believe youre going out on the
ice to try and risk something. So it would kind of paralyze you to
even act basically, and it just kind of resonated with mewanting
to try and make something in the world instead of just talking about
things. (Doyle)
By applying the reflective age to the digital age, the carnival once
again comes alive through anonymous (masked) critique and judgment,
and the ease in which one can comment on anothers work versus the
time and effort it takes to be a creator. Butler emphasizes the desire to
move beyond the paralysis of the reflective age and instead to make
something in the world.
The carnivalesque is also present through a consideration of
the bacchanal and the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy. In Greek
mythology, Apollo, the god of the sun, represents human individuality and
celebrates creativity through logic and reason. Dionysus or Bacchus, the god
of wine, symbolizes chaos, madness, ecstasy, and emotion. This dichotomy
accounts for the ways in which a desire to create and contribute is eventually
met with value judgments and critiques that are increasingly plentiful and
uncontrollable in the digital age.
Furthermore, the myth of Orpheus recurs throughout the Reflektor
campaign and it reiterates Butlers thoughts on Kierkegaard and the reflective
age. Auguste Rodins sculpture of Orpheus and Eurydice comprises the
albums cover. There are songs on the album titled Awful Sound (Oh
Eurydice) and Its Never Over (Oh Orpheus) on which the married
couple of Win and Regine communicate the mythic couple of Orpheus
and Eurydice. As well, Camus Black Orpheus significantly accompanied
the albums leak. Many reviews of the album point to the myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice as it pertains to the theme of reflection (see Pareles), but what
is perhaps more significant is that Orpheus is killed by the mythic agents of
the carnivalesque, torn apart by Dionysus maenads. And as a compelling

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

65

addendum to the assertion that place remains a key component in the

production and promotion of popular music, it is in Orpheus demise that we
can locate an essential message that the Reflektor campaign communicates:
to be wary of the ways in which the self is cut and chopped into fragments
online and in contemporary culture. Our reflections, of our reflections, of
our reflections.
Notes
1. The author would like to thank Ian Dahlman, Andrew deWaard, and
David Madden for insightful thoughts and comments on earlier versions of this
article, and for the conversations during fall 2013 when Reflektors promotional
campaign was launched.
2. The special can currently be watched on YouTube at http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=_fFAKrIntzY

Works Cited
Allor, M. Locating Cultural Activity: The Main as Chronotope and Heterotopia.
Topia 1 (1997): 4254. Print.
Bakhtin, M. Rabelais and His World. Trans. by Hel`ene Iswolsky. Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 1984. Print.
Beck, U. The Cosmopolitan Vision. Trans. by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2006. Print.
Bourdieu, P. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. by
Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984. Print.
Bowe, M. Arcade FireReflektor Video. Stereogum Sept. 9, 2013. Available
at http://www.stereogum.com/1465612/arcade-fire-reflektor-video/video.
Accessed on Sept. 25, 2013. Online.
Carpenter, L. All About Last Nights Arcade Fire Event. CultMTL Sept. 10,
2013. Available at http://cultMontreal.com/2013/09/arcade-fire. Accessed
on Sept. 29, 2013. Online.
Carpenter, L. Heres Why Arcade Fire Matter More than Ever. CultMTL Nov. 6,
2013. Available at http://cultMontreal.com/2013/11/arcade-fire-2. Accessed
on Nov. 12, 2013. Online.
Caulfield, K. Arcade Fires Reflektor Debuts at No. 1 on Billboard 200.
Billboard Nov. 6, 2013. Available at http://www.billboard.com/articles/
news/5778250/arcade-fires-reflektor-debuts-at-no-1-on-billboard-200. Accessed on Dec. 1, 2013. Online.

66

Brian Fauteux

Chassagne, R. I let out a cry, as if Id heard everybody I loved had died.

The Guardian: The Observer Jan. 16, 2010. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/17/haiti-earthquake-aid-casualties.
Accessed on Oct. 25, 2013. Online.
Doyle, P. Win Butler Reveals Secret Influences Behind Arcade Fires Reflektor
Rolling Stone Oct. 22, 2013. Available at http://www.rollingstone.
com/music/news/win-butler-reveals-secret-influences-behind-arcade-firesreflektor-20131022. Accessed on Oct. 25, 2013. Online.
Feld, S. A Sweet Lullaby for World Music. Public Culture 12.1 (2000): 14571.
Print.
Feld, S. Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra: Five Musical Years in Ghana. Durham:
Duke UP, 2012. Print.
Frere-Jones, S. A Paler Shade of White: How Indie Rock Lost Its Soul. The
New Yorker Oct. 22, 2007. Available at http://www.newyorker.com/arts/
critics/musical/2007/10/22/071022crmu_music_frerejones?currentPage=1.
Accessed on Dec. 8, 2013. Online.
Frere-Jones, S. Thats All, Folks. The New Yorker Oct. 26, 2007. Available
at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/sashafrerejones/2007/10/thatsall-folks.html. Accessed on Dec. 8, 2013. Online.
Frith, S. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard
UP, 1996. Print.
Germann Molz, J. Cosmopolitanism and Consumption. The Ashgate Research
Companion to Cosmopolitanism. Eds. by Maria Rovisco and Magdalena
Nowicka. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited 2011. 3352. Print.
Harvey, D. Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils. Public
Culture 12.2 (2000): 529564. Print.
Higgins, H. Arcade Fire Exploited Haiti, and Almost No One Noticed.
The Atlantic Nov. 12, 2013. Available at http://www.theatlantic.com/
entertainment/archive/2013/11/arcade-fire-exploited-haiti-and-almost-noone-noticed/281377. Accessed on Dec. 8, 2013. Online.
Kierkegaard, S. The Present Age and Of the Difference between a Genius and an
Apostle. Trans. by Alexander Dru. Introduction by Walter Kaufmann. New
York: Harper & Row, 1962. Print.
Kohl, P. R. A Splendid Time Is Guaranteed for All: The Beatles as Agents of
Carnival. Popular Music and Society 20.4 (1996): 8188. Print.

Reflections of the Cosmopolitan City

67

Marchese, D. 2013: The Year of the Album-Release Stunt. Rolling Stone Dec. 10,
2013. Available at http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/2013-the-yearof-the-album-release-stunt-20131210. Accessed on Jan. 2, 2014. Online.
Mignolo, W. D. The Many Faces of Cosmo-polis: Border Thinking and Critical
Cosmopolitanism. Public Culture 12.3 (2000): 721748. Print.
Modell, J. Arcade Fire: Reflektor. The A.V. Club Oct. 29, 2013. Available at http://www.avclub.com/review/arcade-fire-emreflektorem-104839.
Accessed on Dec. 9, 2013. Online.
Molanphy, C. Reflektor Debuts at #1But Why Havent Arcade Fire
Conquered the Singles Chart? Pitchfork Nov. 8, 2013. Available at
http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/128-arcade-fire-reflektor-top-the-charts.
Accessed on Dec. 8, 2013. Online.
Nurse, K. Globalization and Trinidad Carnival: Diaspora, Hybridity and Identity
in Global Culture. Cultural Studies 13.4 (1999): 661690. Print.
Pareles, J. Staying Serious, to a Joyful Beat: Arcade Fire Lightens Up (a
Bit) on Reflektor. The New York Times Oct. 28, 2013. Available
at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/arts/music/arcade-fire-lightens-upa-bit-on-reflektor.html. Accessed on Dec. 8, 2013. Online.
Pelly, J. Arcade Fires Win Butler on Reflektor: A Mash Up of Studio 54 and Haitian Voodoo. Pitchfork Sept. 11 , 2013. Available
at http://pitchfork.com/news/52254-arcade-fires-win-butler-on-reflektor-amash-up-of-studio-54-and-haitian-voodoo. Accessed on Oct. 25, 2013.
Online.
Pollock, S, Bhabha, H. K., Breckenridge, C. A., and D. Chakrabarty. Cosmopolitanisms. Public Culture 12.3 (2000): 577589. Print.
Robbins, B. Introduction Part 1: Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation. Eds. By Pheng Cheah and
Bruce Robbins. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1998. 119. Print.
Schonfeld, Z. Critics Cant Stop Comparing the Arcade Fire to the
Same Classic Rock. The Atlantic Wire Oct. 29, 2013. Available
at http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/10/critics-cant-stopcomparing-arcade-fire-to-the-same-classic-rock-acts/71055. Accessed on
Oct. 30, 2013. Online.
Tait, R. C. The Beastie Boys Full Court Media Press. Antenna April 28, 2011.
Available at http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2011/04/28/the-beastie-boys%
E2%80%99-full-court-media-press. Accessed on Oct. 25, 2013. Online.

68

Brian Fauteux

Tangari, J. Paul Simon: Graceland: 25th Anniversary Edition. Pitchfork August

1, 2012. Available at http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16843-graceland25th-anniversary-edition. Accessed on March 30, 2014. Online.
The Reflektors. YouTube Sept. 8, 2013. Available at http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=JaGFl8B7Irk. Accessed on Oct. 25, 2013. Online.
Wheeler, B. Arcade Fire responds to online leak by streaming album before
official release. The Globe and Mail Oct. 25, 2013. Available at http://
www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/arcade-fire-responds-to-onlineleak-by-streaming-album-before-official-release/article15092244.
Accessed on Oct. 30, 2013. Online.
Wilson, C. Thirteen Ways of Looking at Arcade Fire: The frustrations of
Reflektor. Slate Nov. 1, 2013. Available at http://www.slate.com/articles/
arts/music_box/2013/11/arcade_fire_s_reflektor_reviewed.html. Accessed
on March 30, 2014. Online.
Zoladz, L. Arcade Fire: Reflektor. Pitchfork Oct. 28, 2013. Available at
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18667-arcade-fire-reflektor. Accessed
on Oct. 30, 2013. Online.