Arcade Fire's Marketing Machine Rolls Out Reflektor

If early rumblings are to be believed, Arcade Fire’s new album Reflektor, due out on Oct. 29 via Merge Records, might become the band’s most successful release to date. That’s no small feat, considering that its most recent album, 2010′s The Suburbs, made its debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and won the band a Grammy for Best Album of the Year. Spin said Reflektor “sounds f—— amazing,” Pitchfork put the title track on its “Best New Music” shortlist, and Rolling Stone published a fawning review that compared the band to a slew of musical legends and called Reflektor one of the great “turning-point classics such as U2′s Achtung Baby and Radiohead’s Kid A.”

O.K., so Rolling Stone may be getting a little ahead of itself, but Arcade Fire is about as big as a rock band can get in today’s fractured musical landscape. With the group releasing an album that takes it in a new artistic direction and potentially makes it even bigger, it’s a little strange that such a hotly anticipated record is being promoted with secret shows and sidewalk chalk. In fact, the way the Montreal-based band is rolling out Reflektor says a lot about the way big-name albums are released today.