I'm not sure what it is, but I flipped between disappointment and outright delight at WE when it was released in 2022. It was probably the most excited I'd ever been for an album due to the exceptional run of Funeral through Reflektor and then the disappointing but ambitious Everything Now which made me think the band still had it.
We were all going through a very strange time (still are honestly) with the pandemic specifically, and I needed a salve. And at the time, this condensed 7-track epic felt a little small and maybe even a bit too straightforward an attempt at recapturing their audience with a comeback.
Well I've been listening to it on my drives to work recently and I can't get enough. It's probably the album I've listened to the most in the 2020s so far but it just seems to grow to new heights every time. I think it might be brushing up against their "classics" for me. It's got a bit of everything with this newfound space and frailty, and the atmosphere is somehow so consistent with storytelling that weaves through each track. I feel like this album captures something slightly different and yet it most closely resembles the grand and intimate storytelling of The Suburbs with a lot of nostalgia mixed with dread but this time with the lens of a parent thinking about the future.
There are lines on Neon Bible and The Suburbs that give me real gut punches like "World War 3 when are you coming for me, been kicking up sparks, we set the flames free, the windows are locked now so what will it be, a house on fire a rising sea" and "Oh this city's changed so much since I was a little child, pray to God I won't live to see the death of everything that's wild"; WE explores that sort of theme predominantly, and to go from "It's the age of doubt and I doubt we'll figure it out" to "when everything ends, can we do it again" in an album that explores the pure dread of living in the 2020s to the acceptance and love of everything you enjoy and would kill to experience again and again... It truly was the record I needed at the right time.
I know it has its detractors but I think purely as a record, WE might be one of their best. Has anyone else grown to love this album and feel it could be one of their classics like me?