Arcade Fire Neon Bible by: Steve Scully Tue:06-Mar-07 Label: Merge Year: 2007 WB rating 70 out of 100

I was at a gig recently where the lead singer of an unknown emo-punk band did the unthinkably embarrassing. Rather than regular on-stage banter, he lifted his fist in the air and shouted: “I want you all to raise your hands.” Strutting about the stage as if we actually knew or cared who he was, the diminutive teen continued on his rant, “now put up your middle fingers and say ‘Fuck George Bush!’”. Some people actually partook in this vomit-inducing display of superficial sycophancy. Some people should shut up.

Politics and music can mix, I don’t deny that, but please, if you’re a musician and want your music to have a political message, make it one as deep as any personal message you may impart. I hate all this ‘fuck George Bush’, ‘stop the war’ bullshit, mainly because it doesn’t offer us anything but unqualified statements. It’s like singing: “I’m sad,” instead of singing: “I’m sad because my dad didn’t buy me the car that I wanted,” and just isn’t constructive or illuminative in any way. Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, despite its musical brilliance and terrific production, has the same flaw as this foolish schoolboy. The lyrics aren’t bad, the messages behind the lyrics are just too damn similar to any second, third or fourth-rate ‘politi-rock’ group going round, their religious cynicism reeking of Dan Brown’s, ‘I-just-read-The God Delusion’, naiveté.

Arcade Fire is one of the most respected bands in the world. Their last record, Funeral, battled with alt-rock heavyweights like Wilco and Interpol for the title of ‘Best Album 2004’, and the anticipation surrounding Neon Bible is almost unfathomable. This is why it kills me a little to write this. The record isn’t bad; it’s just not impressive enough.

In all, Neon Bible is an exercise in production and grandeur. A sumptuous ballad, ‘Intervention’ musically echoes the lyrical anxieties about religion through exploitation of the pipe organ – the very aural paradigm of excess. Perhaps the enormity of the album’s production is for a purpose, this purpose being to deliver an underlying message vividly. As if every crescendo echoes a similarly mind-numbing oppressive force in the world. This track is one of the album’s most impressive, and also the first to truly engage its audience on a deeper level than the generic rock of ‘Black Mirror’ or the overbearing preachiness of the title track, ‘Neon Bible’.

The subsequent track, however, is a first for me: an Arcade Fire song that I endeavour to skip every time. With a chorus melody that sounds like a B-grade rock-musical, the first half of ‘Black Wave/Bad Vibrations’ is unbearable. When Win Butler regains the vocals from his wife’s grasp, and almost redeems the track, the damage is already done. The first half of the album is a hit-and-miss affair.

What made Funeral such a profoundly effective record was its personal element, every chord and every lyric being packed with anguish and sincerity. Neon Bible is, for the most part, a far more detached album, and far more affected. Precious few tracks evoke the same emotional energy and try as they might the band cannot make up for this through over-production.

We feel again an inkling of Funeral in ‘Ocean of Noise’, a track finally speaking in a personal, accessible voice, leaving behind a lot of the globally-minded pre-tense of the album’s first half. “All the reasons I gave were just lies to buy myself some time,” finally Win Butler is singing for himself, with a voice that is more in touch with his strengths. Despite the “ocean of violence” reference, which suggests that he is still addressing issues of wider scope than his own, Win is expressing the uneasiness he feels in the current world, not merely voicing a generic message. This is a strength carried through to ‘Windowsill’, which again, despite its tendency to preach, is a personal account of growing anxiety: “I don’t want to fight in a holy war/I don’t want the salesmen coming after me/I don’t want to live in America no more,” Win laments, seemingly terrified as he concludes that: “I don’t want to see it at my windowsill.” The tangibility of war is something none of us is eager to experience, and Win is voicing this honestly and poetically.

Neon Bible has moments of vindication. The aforementioned ‘Intervention’ and ‘Windowsill’ being two moments where Arcade Fire recover their feet, and with the re-hash of ‘No Cars Go’, a track from their debut EP, they regain an energy that is equally as infectious as it is oppressive. The instrumentation on this track is lush and grand, whilst retaining some sort of graceful ambience. As the choral vocals kick in, the ability of this band is made clear – they have created brilliant, spine-tingling music. In the record’s final track, ‘My Body Is A Cage’, simple vocals again convey an honest state of distress, but this time with an inkling of hope: “My body is a cage that keeps me from dancing with the one I love/But my mind holds the key.”

I hope that Arcade Fire hasn’t shown us all their cards. I hope they haven’t given us their best, but judging from this record, they may not again reach the heights of Funeral. I hate falling back on it, but the ‘sophomore album syndrome’, anyone? There’s plenty to listen to here, and if this was a record by any other band, it would be hailed as a brilliant work showing amazing potential. But would you expect a work showing ‘potential’ from Radiohead? Would you be satisfied with a patchy effort from Wilco? These are bands that Arcade Fire was compared to in the genius stakes. Did you really think Moo, You Bloody Choir was the best Augie March had to offer? Was The Flaming Lips’ At War With The Mystics a suitable follow-up to Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots? Were you satisfied? Bands who set themselves a standard of brilliance shouldn’t settle for anything less.