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 genre-hopping 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. 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
evokes most of all is
. 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)." ~ James Christopher Monger