Policy, the debut solo outing from the excitable
Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalist and younger brother of frontman Win Butler, casts
Will Butler as the less relentlessly earnest of the two siblings, but the jarringly schizophrenic (musically) eight-song set retains his flagship band's penchant for taking on the big questions of faith, capitalism, and cultural identity in the 21st century, albeit with a decidedly less heavy hand. Like his elder brother,
Butler employs a nervy vocal style that's an amalgamation of
David Byrne,
Tom Verlaine, and
Gordon Gano, but he lacks Win's gravitas, resulting in moments of unintended vulnerability where there should have been an exclamation point. As a songwriter and arranger,
Butler is solid enough, even if he comes off as more than a little ADHD. Defiant opener "Take My Side" is pure
Strokes-ian proto-punk peppered with honeyed girl group "shoo-la-la-la's," the icy "Anna" stalks its quarry against a backdrop of coiled new wave austerity, and the warmly lit ballads "Finish What I Started" and "Sing to Me" invoke names like
Dennis Wilson and
Father John Misty, but what
Policy evokes most of all is
Arcade Fire. The fiery and fractured, emotionally charged indie punk foundations of "Son of God" and "What I Want" sound like they were born out of the same sessions that produced
The Suburbs' "Month of May," and the hypnotic "Something's Coming," with its psych-kissed, deep pocket groove and elliptical melodies, feels like the lost B-side of Reflektor's "It's Never Over (Oh Orpheus)." For an album that clocks in at just under 28 minutes,
Policy manages to drop a ton of ideas, but if often feels more like a purge than a mission statement; the ballast of being in one of the world's biggest (both figuratively and literally) bands, and while
Butler may have the chops to captain his own ship, he'll need to put some more water behind him before he can successfully steer the beast into port. [
Policy was also released on LP.] ~ James Christopher Monger