I’d never listened to Arcade Fire. I’d heard all the great things: They’re the new [insert great band name here]. They’re the best group in rock today. They won a Grammy. They sang “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” at Wrigley Field. Their albums are transcendent art-rock masterpieces.
Nonetheless, even though I bought their latest album, The Suburbs, at Target for $9.99 about four months ago, as of three days ago, I still hadn’t listened to it.
Maybe it was “The Wire” syndrome. Most of my friends told me I had to watch “The Wire.” “It’s the best show in TV history, by far,” they’d say. “Makes ‘The Sopranos’ look like a cartoon. Trust me.”
I’d nod and vow to watch it, even going so far as to buy the first season on DVD. But then I let it sit in a drawer for two years. Then, one night when the dishes were done and a cycle through the channels came up empty, my wife and I put it on and sat in silence and didn’t stop until we had obsessed over it for three months and my wife started calling me McNulty (by my request). Turns out my friends were right.
The same goes for Arcade Fire. I knew I liked their name. It evoked memories of my days growing up outside New York, hunkering down in dark video-game rooms and playing Super Cobra, Punch Out! and Defender until I was on my knees searching for quarters on the dirty carpet. That, and the title of The Suburbs and the vague knowledge that the album was a concept piece about growing up disillusioned in the subdivided communities of America pulled me closer to committing some time to their music.
And then, in February, the lineup was announced for Bonnaroo, a festival I attend each year. With that four-day extravaganza looming in June and with Arcade Fire among the headliners, I needed to know if their set would be worth attending. I was already less than fired up about suffering through the humid, ninety-degree Tennessee days with intermittent fecal winds blowing in my direction from the massive embankments of Porta-Potties while listening to Eminem or Lil Wayne or Widespread Panic or the String Cheese Incident. I didn’t need to add to my discomfort.
I was ready to give the Arcade Fire a shot.
I texted my friend Paul Shirley, an Arcade Fire fan. I told him the premise of this article — that I would finally listen to the Arcade Fire, each album once, and give my first impressions — and asked him which order I should listen to them in. He told me to check out their great debut, Funeral, first, then The Suburbs, and then their inferior — to the other two, at least — sophomore effort, Neon Bible, last. He then mentioned that he’d seen them in Kansas City recently and, “Jeesh they were good.”
OK, then. I had a plan. I did as I was told. Here are my findings…
Funeral starts out with “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” and “Neighborhood #2 (Laika)” and already I feel like they’ve got a sound heavily rooted in the 1980s. It’s part U2, with the driving guitars and songs built around a rhythmic groove rather than a verse-chorus-bridge convention, but the male singer’s voice reminds me of the guy in one of those 1980s bands. Maybe Echo and the Bunnymen. The instrumentation is well thought-out and varied. The lyrics are weird and would probably pretty cool if I could understand them. The guy’s voice is OK, not great. This could be a problem. Neither of the first two songs really go anywhere beyond their respective ground-levels, it seems. From how wrought and weighty this music strikes me as being, I was expecting more of a crescendo in both and didn’t get it.
“Une Annee Sans Lumiere” is next, and it’s a slower, pretty song with some acoustic elements…right before it turns into a chugging steam train of a rock song with about a minute to go. Pretty cool. I think the Shins ripped it off with “Sleeping Lessons,” and I didn’t notice it because I had never heard Arcade Fire until now.
The next “Neighborhood” song — #3 (Power Out) — heads into some sort of hybrid Talking Heads/Modest Mouse-ish territory. I’m still not sold on the lead singer’s voice, but it’s getting more melodic as the album plays. The amount of drama attached to each “big” song, like the driving, layered “Power Out,” is impressive in its ambition, but I still don’t feel compelled to listen to any of these songs again. This one might be two minutes too long, since it doesn’t escalate into anything. It just maintains its level and repeats. I do, however, feel like this song would kick my ass live if I had a few beers in me. Then again, so would “Run To You” by Bryan Adams. It would just take a few more beers.
“Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)” is what I assume to be Arcade Fire’s take on country music, and it’s forgettable. It’s a pleasant moment of quiet in the midst of some thundering rage, like the eye of a hurricane, so I guess it has its purpose. OK, maybe it’s one that will grow on me.
“Crown Of Love” comes in next and I’ve done a Google search now and learned that the singer’s name is Win Butler. He’s crooning on this number, which has strings and driving piano accompaniment and a kind of “Sea of Love” 1960s vibe. I’m not sure that I dig it. In fact, I definitely don’t. I’m stopping it about three-quarters of the way in and going to the next song.
It’s “Wake Up,” and I think I recognize this from somewhere. The main guitar riff and wailing of the chorus is very rock n’ roll and very cool. Again, though: Do these songs really need to be so long? This one is 5:36, and it’s just the same thing over and over again. The sound is full and rich and powerful, but it’s all rooted in that basic guitar riff, which gets repetitive, even after the key change that serves as a hallmark to the bridge with about two minutes to go. The somewhat hokey “You Can’t Hurry Love” change that comes after that doesn’t really work for me, either. I would have been fine with the song being three minutes long and just packing the best parts of it into one short blast of adrenaline.
The next track is “Haiti,” and the shuffling drum beat, meandering bass, and acoustic guitars give it a nice swing. A woman is singing, which would be great except that she’s got one of those bird-chirping voices I can’t stand. Again, I sense a repetitive melody that doesn’t challenge me with its complexity. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m not really into this groove, so I don’t want to ride it out. Next.
That would be “Rebellion (Lies),” which has a bass line similar to U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” About a minute in, the drums kick in and start to drive, but the melody is stuck in neutral. It hardly changes. The thing that keeps disappointing me about this album continues, with each song being an almost interminable groove that doesn’t lift or sink very far from a consistent churn. The talent is so clear from the hand-clapping to the layered backing vocals to the ringing guitar tracks to subtle key changes, but there’s always that same bass line locking everything in to a flatline. I want more.
“In the Backseat” is my last shot with Funeral, and despite a lilting lady singer and the techno-sounding setup of acoustic guitar and ethereal synth, piano and accordion tones, I don’t know if I’m going to get it. The trademark guitar chug begins in earnest a little over a minute in and then subsides back into the pastoral opening part. I’m assuming, based on the fact that I haven’t heard many stark departures from theme in the record so far, that this back-and-forth will continue. It does, and while the harder part becomes more dramatic with wailing string sections and thundering drums, I’m not sure if I’m really buying it.
In short, after one listen, I think there’s a lot of potential here, and I can’t imagine that this is the Arcade Fire’s best album. There’s gotta be more.
I start The Suburbs, and already it’s much different and I can tell I like it a lot more than Funeral. Granted, this one is six years down the road of Arcade Fire’s growth, but from the pseudo-honky-tonk piano intro of the title track and with Butler’s voice much more prominent and clear in the mix, it’s much more my style.
I’ve heard that this is a concept album, so I’m not necessarily expecting each song to build and explode like I was with Funeral. I will expect that with some of the later songs in the sixteen-track progression and understand that the earlier tunes might serve to set up story and mood. This one is working in that regard, painting a lyrical landscape that’s fitting into what I thought and hoped it would be, although I still think it’s too long. Maybe I’ll be able to get past that soon. Maybe not.
The second song, “Ready to Start,” sounds like most of the faster songs on Funeral, which don’t interest me all that much at this point. I like the melody and rhythm, but it’s just not that intriguing.
I move on to the third one, “Modern Man,” and it’s the best Arcade Fire song I’ve heard yet. The off-beat syncopation grabs me, Butler’s voice is as good and up-front and articulate as it’s been, and the musical breaks at the end of the verses feature juicy guitar licks. When the intensity of the rhythm guitar breaks the playful tempo of the song, it works and invokes for me more power than I’ve felt in any of the songs that the band probably intended to be more powerful. This is getting good.
“Rococo” is next, and the use of the “modern kids” image in the first line indicates that yes, each song is building off the previous one. This is one gorgeous, haunting melody, and the extension of the syllables of the title into a chant that colors the entire chorus is a brilliant choice. I’m mesmerized as the synthesizer rises above it all and the drums pound as if in some faraway tribal dirge lit by a roaring, driftwood-fueled fire.
The next song, “Empty Room,” is another hard-charging groove spiced up with harmonies between Butler and the female voice — whom I’ve now identified as Butler’s wife, Regine Chassagne — and some cool lead guitar bends. But it’s one of those straightforward, one-tempo rock songs that doesn’t go into any previously uncharted territory.
The difference, and I attribute it to the growth I referred to earlier, is that this song isn’t even three minutes long, so when it segues right into the slower, anthemic “City With No Children,” it fits. It was meant to go into this song. It was meant to provide chaos that leads to a song that brings it all together, and “City With No Children” isn’t just that. It’s more. It’s great. I can tell without even listening to the remaining ten songs on the album that this one is probably close to the core of the whole experience, maybe even the high point. The rising and falling main guitar riff, the elegant and infectious melody, the crescendo of Chassagne’s backing “aaaaahs” mixed with synthesizer and her high harmonies floating above Butler’s … it’s potential reached. It’s glorious.
In fact, it’s enough. I’m sold on Arcade Fire. I don’t have to listen to the rest of this album right now, nor do I have to listen to Neon Bible until I’m sick of this after a hundred spins and sick of giving Funeral another chance or three or seven. I’m going to see this band at Bonnaroo, and jeesh, they will be good.
Now it’s time for a little Bryan Adams before I go to bed.
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