Arcade Fire Neon Bible by: Tom Hall Tue:06-Mar-07 Label: Merge Year: 2007 WB rating 72 out of 100

With their second LP, Neon Bible, Arcade Fire have produced an album which radiates with relevance. Musically, this is a tremendous step forward. The instrumentation is faultless, and subtlety soaks every sonic rise and fall through the entire length of the album, evidenced most clearly on songs like ‘Ocean of Noise’, where the orchestration and ascension of the song is typified by contained intensity. This is the central issue of their follow-up to the brilliant, and intensely personal, Funeral. For while there is no doubt that Arcade Fire is an outstanding band, the direction of this album sets them on a collision course with conflicting aims. While there is a very clear sense that the band has aimed to grow beyond the introspection and self-obsession of Funeral, this has resulted in a focus on themes of modernity, rooted in the very ‘known’ world of network television and commodified nationhood, dry and dreary subjects which lay at the centre of a huge worldwide focus. This is a land-mined zone of cliché and regurgitation, sticky puddles and bone-shattering bumps which threaten to ensnare or obliterate even the most astute artists, a predicament which has resulted in a flawed display by an incredible group.

Considering their Canadian citizenships and distrust of the assumptive mainstream, nationhood is an interesting theme for Arcade Fire to tackle. The Home has always been a focal subject. From the very base premise of the band – a young husband and wife, creating music, playing on stage together as the most admirably unmodern example of how to overcome great pain, suffering and loneliness – the answers have always been far from cognitively based. Respite from the horror of Gen-X dysfunction has been achieved through finding tiny semblances of positivity in the very little good we have: neighbourhoods, the freedom of a first car, literature, history. Through the music and lyrics of their debut album Arcade Fire (as the mouthpiece for a formidable collaboration, a screaming disquieted troupe) exhibited an uncanny ability to take the little positives which modern life has left us with, and transform it into grotesque agents of change: piling snow can be overcome by “dig(ging) a tunnel from my window to yours” (‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’); liberation from a torturous broken home is found in the back seat of ones first car (‘In The Backseat’); and against the utter abandonment and resulting dissatisfaction with the family unit, we draw strength from Alexander the Great, find understanding in legends over 2300 years old, and are able to express total disgust that our parents and governments and societal trustee’s fire us into their solar system of emotional and spiritual sufferance – like doomed Russian space dog’s (‘Neighborhood #2 (Laika)’). The home is broken, and the love is out of reach. But where do we go if we can’t stay here?

We hit the road, that’s what we do. We follow Kerouac and Dylan, we sniff the pavement for traces of Huck Finn, we coo-ee across canyons and streets. Neon Bible is the sound of filling up the tank; it’s the soundtrack to transcending the ‘here’, the growing storm we hear in the background of opening track ‘Black Mirror’. While Funeral was an album which so precisely captured the sound of disappointment that life’s most important institution, the family, failed to provide a satisfactory level of love and support, Neon Bible exudes a burgeoning sense of closure. The trembling disbelief is gone but the dissatisfaction remains, tempered by the liberating realisation that we are not slaves to our situation, that we can move forward with steadied strength and, as evidenced in ‘Intervention’, calm. This song is a touch point of sadness reinterpreted. Whilst still focused on the subject of tremendously flawed role-models, the simple rhythm and gently building intensity of the song temper the outright anger, galvanising it with a sense of inevitability allowed by a change in perspective. ‘Mature’ seems the right word here, but it is not. Less emotive and reactive, yet frontman Win Butler seems uneasy in the measured dryness of grandly stating the tragedy that a father has been: “Working for the church while your family dies”. In this context of maturity and confrontation the line “Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home” comes across as less profound, and more derivative, allowing for the emotion to become distanced and almost predictable, an aspect which contrasts dramatically with the concise fluidity witnessed on his previous work.

Yet even amidst such failings there is constant respite, for the energy of track’s like ‘The Well and the Lighthouse’, ‘Windowsill’ and the excellent ‘No Cars Go’ suggest something more important: Arcade Fire are fashioning a sound which is incredibly unique, yet known, a glorious contradiction which can create butterflies of excitement at any stage. Neon Bible’s legacy is a reiteration of their prolific flair for contrast and subtlety, songs which seem to be constantly developing and so littered with spikes of pure emotion and honesty that they almost incite bleeding of the brain. ‘No Cars Go’ is a “must be heard to be believed” sort of song: needless to say it showcases the boundless potential that Arcade Fire exemplifies.

Sonically, this album is a huge step forward. Woodwind, organ and choir are all utilised perfectly, and song structure is a subject which has evidently been attacked with relentless fervour. In the wake of near unanimous praise, success seems to have energised rather than placated, and this is an excellent result. There persists, however, an infuriating development lag in the lyrical and subject-matter department, and there is very little explanation given for this. For every beautifully coordinated musical set-up, there is a coinciding slip in wordplay; a throwaway line or derivative turn of phrase. In striving to grow as a songsmith and narrator, Butler has stepped beside his freshly fashioned groove, and into a rut which steers us further from a satisfactory understanding of what it is about the world being described that we should be concerned for. Themes of rising seas, familial estrangement, resurrection and dissatisfaction abound, yet there is very little tangible evidence that we are meant to find some worthwhile point. Neon Bible is unsettling in its inaccuracy, and yet so glorious to listen to and pick apart that it almost seems intentional. But it’s not, and this is unfortunate. However, all is far from lost. The prevailing sense one gets from this album is that the general trend is a steep incline, and, in this sense at least, we can look forward to the continued development of this already phenomenal group.