CREDIT: WILL BUTLER
Oscar nominee and brother of Arcade Fire's front man Win Butler, Will Butler put out his debut solo album Policy to eager ears.

LONDON — Arcade Fire may be in between albums right now but the members of the Canadian sextet are far from taking a break.

Multi-instrumentalist Will Butler is the brother of Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler and has kept busy over the past year. His score for Spike Jonze’s Her was nominated for an Oscar and now he has put out his debut solo album, Policy.

Policy is a must-listen for Arcade Fire fans. It’s an angrier, anti- 21st-century, hard-rocking album that takes all the cynicism of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and The Suburbs, and turns it up to 11.

The album recalls religious imagery and gospel-inspired atmosphere of the band’s 2007 album Neon Bible. Songs like Take My Side, Sing to Me and Son of God musically and lyrically sound like deep cuts from Neon Bible’s sessions. The lattermost song is one of the high points of the album.

Another highlight track, Anna, makes excellent use of a mix of an electro-pop sound, horns and brass instruments.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem is that the album sounds too much like Arcade Fire. Solo albums generally allow artists to explore different sounds and styles but you could drop any one of the tracks into an Arcade Fire album and it would integrate seamlessly.

Put the hard rocking What I Want in The Suburbs and you could fit Butler’s lyrics right into the Grammy Award winning album’s thesis when he shouts out, “I’m not saying that we should rush this / I’m not saying that we should start having kids / but maybe, we could think about getting a dog / or a fish tank or a jar of squids / or a chicken coup for some alligators.”

By the end of the album, it’s hard to tell what Butler is trying to get across, aside from a nostalgia for the angrier tone of Arcade Fire’s previous work. Take My Side, Anna, Son of God, Something’s Coming and What I Want are aggressive, critical songs but the album completely changes tone at the end. On the penultimate song Sing to Me, Butler croons, “I’m angry, and I’ve been very wrong before,” and then on the final track Witness, he belts out, “I don’t wanna tell the world what I saw / but the world has got to learn the truth / so it’s up to you.” If there is some kind of truth that is supposed to be shared from this album, good luck telling what it is.

Policy is fun and worth listening to, but it’d be better if Butler would break policy and pull out something different.