Music |
Arcade Fire
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Rock
At the end of a Carnegie Hall tribute to Bruce Springsteen, the Boss strolled onstage. He started to sing “Rosalita.” It’s a long song and the hour was late, and after a full night of music, the rare thing would be Bruce…talking. So he stopped and said:
“Anyway, you know the rest: Rosie rode off with our hero . . . they got married . . and they lived pretty much happily ever after, more or less . . . despite what you might read in one or two tabloid stories. Our hero got himself a band . . made a fortune and became a star and made a whole lot of people happy with his songs. . . and then he started to get sort of happy himself. So he broke up the band, and started writing a bunch of songs about being happy. And no one liked them. So he got the band back together. He wrote some new songs. These ones were about being sad. Everyone loved them…”
Funny lines. Self-knowing in the extreme. But they cut the actual chronology short. For the band was dissolved a second time. Our hero did solo projects. Which meant there was no adult-friendly arena band that played music which forced tens of thousands to their feet, waving lighters and punching fists. And so, as sure as Nature abhors a vacuum, She made Arcade Fire.
I resisted Arcade Fire. I knew this band was a hip-hop-happening thing because a slew of profiles appeared in the grown-up magazines I read — well, I made a point of reading not a word. Then I was ambushed by the local college radio station, which couldn’t play enough of “Neon Bible.” And my resolve weakened.
I still haven’t read a single profile of Arcade Fire. All I know is that the band is Montreal-based. That the co-founder is named Win Butler (no relation). And that Arcade Fire is seven or eight musicians, all so accomplished that the band’s songs range from the subtle to the Spectoral.
I loaded “Neon Bible” into my iPod a while back, and I’ve had it for company on my neighborhood expeditions. At first I was shocked. The opening song — wasn’t that “Suffragette City,” by David Bowie? And didn’t I hear echoes of the ghost of Queen’s Freddie Mercury?
With the second cut, I started to laugh. The pounding piano. The thundering drums-and-bass. Arcade Fire = Bruce Springsteen. At last I had found a new companion for the elliptical trainer.
But Arcade Fire is better than that. Bruce wrote story songs, and the narratives were open to interpretation. Butler and crew pack their music with metaphor, and the dark language matches the bleakness and paranoia of our age:
Every night my dream’s the same
Same old city with a different name
Men are coming to take me away
I don’t know why, but I know I can’t stay
From the title song:
A vial of hope and a vial of pain
In the light they both looked the same
Poured them out on into the world
On every boy and every girl
It’s in the Neon Bible, the Neon Bible
Not much chance for survival
If the Neon Bible is right
And from “Intervention,” the weightiest number:
Who’s gonna throw the very first stone?
Oh! Who’s gonna reset the bone?
Walking with your head in a sling
Wanna hear the solider sing:
"Been working for the Church while my family dies
Your little baby sister’s gonna lose her mind
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home"
Hear the soldier groan: "We’ll go at it alone.”
Although the lyrics are hard to hear — more often than not, the band is one loud wall of sound — the adolescent boy in me will always vote for articulate defiance. But I’m also amused by the textures of this CD; a heart-pounder that begins with a massive church organ playing what sounds like a gloomy Bach fugue might be followed by a fluffy gang ‘o girls who remind you of the Go-Gos. And the surprises just keep on…
Come for the sound, stay for the smarts.
To buy “Neon Bible” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Funeral” from Amazon.com, click here.
