A Week With Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible": Day 2
10 March 2007
tell your friends...
Words by David Bevan // Illustration by Chris Gregori
John Kennedy Toole took his own life at 32, sucking on the carbon monoxide he looped back into the running car in which he sat. Alone.
Though A Confederacy of Dunces earned his words and his name fame, his first novel will undoubtedly start flying off shelves and into nicotine-stained hands in the months to come. Written at 16, The Neon Bible was the book he found too rough to publish, a work that would later ride the wave of success sparked by the author’s masterpiece. Although chronologically incongruent, both the record and the book will always enjoy their respective successes in the shadow of masterstrokes. We might not turn the page or drop the needle had it not been for all the magic that came before. That’s sad.
The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible stands on its own. It doesn’t possess the kind of galvanizing immediacy that its predecessor did, but pound for pound, yelp for yelp, it gets its punches in with precision; it grows on you.
There are those records that you love within seconds and those you grow to love. You can guess of which stripe Neon Bible belongs.
Unlike the book of the same name, this is a polished work ready for careful, patient consumption. Be it the new-wave romanticizing of “Black Waves” or the gothic swirl of “Bad Vibrations,” each track toys successfully — and almost too obsessively — with the blend of genres it crushes on. But for all the emotional ballast inherent in the band’s vocal harmonies and sonic theatrics, it seems that all of that energy has somehow been bridled, designed to build slowly before achieving its black, but ultimately still satisfying, orgasm.
Look to the first single as proof. As it leaked and streaked the world wide web, “Intervention” sated the appetites of many. It’s a muscular first single that supplements well the resume the band has scribed at light speed, one album under its belt, but a throng of devotees in tow. Just over four minutes of the kind of cathedral sprawl everyone had come to expect, but with one striking difference: gone are the teary ruminations and emotional shrapnel sprayed about in the set of anthems that came years before it. It’s less heart, more brain.
Win Butler ain’t mad at God, just his PR team.
When people count albums they usually don’t include EPs.
ps “Intervention” isn’t a single [yet]. “Black Mirror” is the US single and “Keep the Car Running” is the UK single.
commenting closed for this article
Recent Progressive Reviews
all content © 2006-2008, daytrotter®, all rights reserved. | Free MP3s for your iPod. | Contact Us | p3p privacy policy | For information about Advertising, send a message to: advertising@daytrotter.com
All songs posted at Daytrotter.com are the exclusive property of the respective recording artists and Daytrotter. Please do not post these songs on other websites/weblogs, etc. We encourage you to link directly to our songs page or the specific free songs page for a particular band/artist.
Daytrotter is a registered trademark of Daytrotter Media, LLC.
two albums under its belt…