arcade fire by chris gregori

A Week With Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible": Day 1

8 March 2007
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by David Bevan // Illustration by Chris Gregori

Funeral was a comet, a miracle of an album as bulletproof as it was dear. It gave a certain website its wings, subsequently forging a brand of taste-makers and throwing offline print journalism on its head. It was that important of an album — not quite as culturally jarring as Nevermind, but certainly just as potent. Painfully melodramatic yet genuinely cathartic, the record married the anthemic and intimate with a seemingly preternatural ease that hypnotized listeners and vexed imitators. From the opening minutes of “Neighborhood #1” to the homestretch of “Wake Up”, each and every movement was bottled ecstasy for the solitude just below your bed, not the swinging of pillows or heavy petting reserved for the linens just a few feet above.

Interesting then, that there has been little if any talk of a dreaded sophomore slump. While the masses whispered of The Shins’ post-Garden State backlash, Neon Bible and its pending release have crept softly albeit self-assuredly. Everyone just knew that Neon Bible would bend minds and change the direction in which blood coursed through our veins. The album’s predecessor left us all with little reason to doubt the band’s creative acumen, nor it’s often puzzling choice in aesthetic. The typewriters fell silent but the buzz has still grown expectedly palpable. Call it marketing genius, call it what you will. It was just time to sing along again, no matter how much it hurt.

But “Black Mirror” isn’t that kind of opener, nor is Neon Bible that kind of record. The band has crafted an album that transplants their knack for bridling the theatric in a much more cinematic context. It needs room to really explore the expanse and landscape of the soul, the album’s seemingly inherent sonic momentum ravaging scenery in the way its predecessor ripped through the yellowed pages of scrapbooks.

“Black Mirror” bubbles with precisely that brand of kinetic intensity. Piano, dirges and strings that drive and scream for something, anything less claustrophobic then the confines of our brains. The band’s answer: “Keep the Car Running”, three minutes of shedding the straightjacket in a hurry. It smacks of bluegrass but reinforces well an intent to alter — no matter how marginally— the focal point in song writing. These are journeys of a different stripe, a different scope.

Train. Jet-black Hearse. It doesn’t matter. We’ll run there if we have to.

Arcade Fire Official Site
Merge Records

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