Reflektor

Arcade Fire recorded Reflektor with James Murphy, and the title track carries Murphy’s LCD Soundsystem fingerprints all over it — a seven-and-a-half-minute dance-rock epic built on a looping rhythm, a horn section that feels like it has arrived from a different era, and a David Bowie cameo in the second half.

The song pivots on a simple idea: we see each other only through reflections. It takes seven minutes to say this, which is exactly how long it takes to feel true. The arrangement is the specific shape of a cinematic ordinary day — the walk across the parking lot while the song builds, the sense that you are being watched by something benevolent, the horns arriving like the light changing for a reason.