Neon Bible

As I mentioned in a blog post back in late February or early March, the Arcade Fire won a Grammy this year for best album for The Suburbs.  My first introduction to them was actually “Intervention” off of their second long player, Neon Bible.  “Intervention” was an interesting introduction for me.  I latched onto the church pipe organ sound it had and the lyrics, which I found profound and could be translated different ways.  A few months later I heard “Keep the Car Running”, which I loved right away.

Neon Bible put the Arcade Fire on the map of popular music, helping to increase their audience size and to expand the reaches of their music.  Neon Bible is quite different from their first record, Funeral, which received a lot of critical praise.  Neon Bible also was critically hailed and is the topic of this entry.

# 92 – The Arcade Fire, Neon Bible (Metascore = 87)

This record is decidedly more edgy than the previous record.  According to online sources, Win Butler said the band looked at the world as an outsider looking in.  What they found was a world in turmoil—wars in different regions, greed, control in the arms of a few.  Butler purposely set out to fight these issues head on.  The name of the album itself speaks against one issue they studied while recording:  greedy televangelists embroiled in controversy.  This particular theme reappears in songs on the album (“Neon Bible”).  You can interpret this record in different ways, which makes the songs’ lyrics more intriguing; that ability to decide your own interpretation means more time to argue with someone else.

International war (particularly the United States’ campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq) was heavy on the band’s minds, too.  Songs like “Black Mirror”, “Intervention”, and other songs speak of how this imperialistic society and the individuals in power are destroying families, friendships, and society itself through greed and power.  One area the band is not afraid to address is poverty in Haiti, a lot of which is due to the individuals in power.  Régine Chassagne’s (Win Butler’s wife and bandmate) parents were from Haiti but migrated to Montreal during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier; she frequently writes about the struggles there in her songs (“Black Wave/Bad Vibrations”).

Musically the band wanted a stripped down sound, but as they recorded they realized the lyrics demanded more than just guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards.  During the sessions, the band incorporated a number of different instruments to great effect.  The church pipe organ in “Intervention” is the best in my mind.  I think the sound does the best at capturing the heart ache that Butler sings about.

Overall, I enjoy Neon Bible, though not to the same degree that I enjoy The Suburbs or Funeral.  Unlike those albums, sometimes Neon Bible comes across as too over-the-top and occasionally preachy.  It is better than some of the other records I have heard, so I would agree with the Metascore (ok, maybe I’d knock it down 1 point, but that’s not much of a change).