Arcade
5 stars
This record is huge. Arcade Fire‘s sophomore album, Neon Bible, is the best album so far this year. This album is full of hopelessness, insecurity, and paranoia, which all have been written and sung about before. Arcade Fire, though, do it on a scale unmatched by any of their peers. And they somehow avoid any pretension, including when they sing in French.
The Montreal septet recorded Neon Bible in a church. The album, however, has little to do with religion. One exception is “(Antichrist Television Blues),” in which a Joe Simpson-like man reaches out to God and talks about his daughter: “Dear God, I’m a good Christian man… My girl’s 13, but she don’t act her age. She can sing like a bird in a cage. O Lord, if you could see her when she’s up on that stage!” Singer Win Butler channels the voice and style of Bruce Springsteen in this track with great success. Most of the time, though, Win wails as if he’s in front of a large and hopeless congregation. His mournful and pleading voice is reminiscent of David Byrne‘s voice, but his style is all his own.
Neon Bible features a sense of hopelessness only touched on slightly in the band’s 2004 debut, Funeral, which was also a masterpiece. The haunting opener to Neon Bible, “Black Mirror,” sets the tone brilliantly. Next comes the paranoia of “Keep the Car Running.” “Keep the Car Running’s” abrupt end is one of two such endings that brings a sense of uneasiness. The second song that has an abrupt ending is “(Antichrist Television Blues).” The silence between that song and the next song, “Windowsill,” is chilling. “Windowsill” is a phenomenal protest song. Butler, an American expatriate, is pretty direct in his message: “Don’t wanna fight in a holy war. Don’t want the salesmen knocking at my door. I don’t wanna live in America no more. ‘Cause the tide is high, and it’s rising still. And I don’t wanna see it at my windowsill.”
Neon Bible features some amazing lyrical imagery. Water and oceans are mentioned a lot, giving a distinct feeling of loneliness. “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations” conveys a feeling of dread. There’s the lonely “Ocean of Noise”: “Left in the morning while you were fast asleep into an ocean of violence, a world of empty streets.” And “The Well and the Lighthouse”: “So down I fell, down into the water black. My prison cell, only the moon was shining back.”
The band covers itself with “No Cars Go.” The song originally appeared on Arcade Fire’s self-titled first EP in 2003. The more-refined Neon Bible version has a slightly faster tempo, and it fits on the album perfectly. The finale, “My Body Is a Cage,” is a haunting track that crescendos to spine-tingling heights just when you think the record can’t get any better.
Win Butler’s wife and bandmate, Régine Chassagne, did much of the orchestral arrangements on the record, and they’re phenomenal. The organs and strings add so much depth to the music, especially in “Intervention” (also an exception to the religion thing). The extent of the depth they have rarely is seen in indie music. Arcade Fire is an extraordinarily talented band who have left their mark on the indie scene. Buy this record!
Scale:
0. Shoot yourself
1. Poor
2. So-So
3. Good
4. Excellent
5. Instant classic