Is it as good as Funeral? I can’t answer that question. Ask again in two years and maybe I’ll be able. It certainly doesn’t grab you with as much force, nor does it possess the same unaffected, almost naïve brilliance. The scope is wider, the themes broader, and the tone darker. There is no song that simply demands to be heard the way I found myself addicted to “Rebellion (Lies)” and I was underwhelmed on the whole after a couple listens.
All that said, I keep coming back, and the more I listen the better it gets. What at first felt unremittingly bleak now admits the occasional ray of hope, what seemed atonal now sounds nuanced, what felt chaotic remains that way but gains increasing beauty and purpose.
One thing cannot be denied: the uniqueness of the band is immediately apparent. People struggle to define exactly what Arcade Fire is – we know they’re post-something, but what precisely? Post-punk, post-rock, post-post? It’s a testament to their unique vision and talents that they defy such easy definition. Indeed, trying to duplicate their sound has become a bit of a cottage industry (virtually every third band on Myspace lists them in their “sounds like” section), and I’m as guilty as anyone of dropping the “sounds like Arcade Fire” line, but let’s be honest, all those imitations pale in comparison another jolt of the real deal.
The one thing I can say for sure is that they play “chamber music” but the size of the chamber can change from second to second. At one moment, it’s small and intimate, gut-wrenchingly tender. And then without warning, you suddenly find yourself in an arena of unimaginable size. The true genius of Arcade Fire is their capacity to create virtually seamless transitions between artistic chamber-pop to arena-post-rock that sounds like the heavens collapsing upon you.
However, if the general sound is the same, there are a number of important differences. This is not simply Funeral redux. It is darker, more sinister, and where Funeral grabbed and shook you to pieces, Neon Bible is filled with slow burners that may not stun you immediately but which also will not let go. “Ocean of Noise” spends three minutes teasing at the possibility of a buildup before finally providing some element of release. And even with the minor climax, the title is apt: this song is as deep and dark as the Pacific Ocean. “The Well and the Lighthouse” is pleasant but not overpowering for two and a half minutes before breaking up into a delightfully fractured waltz.
One of the strongest tracks “(Antichrist Television Blues)” gives Win Butler a chance to show some other bands how to evoke Springsteen without sounding hokey. A lament for 9/11 transforms itself into an ode for a starlet daughter, and the whole time there is an element of black humor in the delicate balancing among the hope for escape from a blue-collar life, the hypocrisy of religion, and the strength of faith. It also features some of the most enticing percussion I’ve heard in years – it is subtle but really controls the entire song.
These are just examples: every song on the record is delicately constructed and more than a few layers deep. That said, Neon Bible does suffer, in my mind, from two interlinked weaknesses that (at least for now) prevent me from declaring this the album of the year on the spot.
First, as I mentioned above, it feels calculated. The most amazing thing about Funeral was that every second felt like it simply could not be another way. The internal purpose of the song, the sound, the lyrics: all were a single, organic whole that emerged together. A scream here, a burst of strings there, it all had an artlessness that is unmatched in contemporary music. Neon Bible retains much of that strength, but hits a few bumps as well. The most notable example is the album-closer “My Body is a Cage” which feels forced in every respect. Another weak spot is the instrumentation on a number of the early tracks, which sounds patched-together and artificial. A particularly troubling example is “Intervention,” which (in spite of this) is probably the best track. Perhaps it is simply that I’ve grown accustomed to the pared-down acoustic version which has been floating around for a couple years, but I can’t help but feel that this is a intensely personal song forced to become “Rebellion (Lies), Part II.”
The second weakness is thematic. Where Funeral was intensely personal and (because of this) achieved a sense of universality, Neon Bible attempts to widen the scope to doom and gloom in the broadest sense. We are treated to imagination of the end of the world, uncrossable rivers, empty streets, a world encased in darkness. Where Funeral was about dealing with loss of loved ones, Neon Bible is about an entire world gone mad. The problem is that apocalypse is global, but redemption can only be personal. By focusing too much on the former, the few flashes of hope are quashed before they ever get a chance to develop. Another manifestation is melodic. The second half of “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations,” for example, is stunning in its ability to generate a mood – when I listen to it, I keep looking outside to confirm that we’re not in the middle of a nuclear war. Yet, the effort to create this atmosphere seems to come before the desire to enrich the song with a melody or to give this tension and avenue of release. Similarly, “Black Mirror” is extremely well-constructed but I can’t help but feel that it’s little bit long on the spooky and a little short on the melody. Over several albums they have made clear the importance of atmospherics, but you have to wonder if there’s a limit to how far it can take you.
To put it another way: the album is short on climaxes (or, to be fair, is short on climaxes compared to what we might hope for – they still blow 99.99% of bands to smithereens in this department), because those emerge in the battle between competing elements. The crushing weight is rarely lifted enough to admit room for anything else. This is especially true on the album’s first half, with the darker-than-dark “Black Mirror” followed by the quick paced but not particularly imaginative “Keep the Car Running” and the album’s major downer: “Neon Bible” which appears to be a half-song, a kernel of an idea that never turns into anything else. They tease without giving release.
These two factors combine to create a record that wants so desperately to be meaningful that it, on occasion, overreaches. In an ideal world, meaning emerges spontaneously – it is not manufactured. The line between these two is a very fine one, and it is up to each listener to decide whether they cross it. For me, though, I think Neon Bible risks forcing into existence a world that is bleak beyond repair.
To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that the album simply needs a couple happy songs to balance the mood. Instead, I think they would have been well-served by a one or two more songs like “Intervention,” which bites as deeply as anything else on the record, but does so by giving a particular, personal incarnation to the pressing darkness (“Been working for the church while your life falls apart / Been singing ‘Hallelujah’ with the fear in your heart”). Here, the apocalypse is not some relentless, undefined force that exists outside ourselves – it is born of our own hypocrisy, mistakes, and terror. The condemnation in “Intervention” is so stinging because it is a catastrophe of our own making.
Contrast this with the unremittingly bleak “Black Mirror” which appeals to a sense of inescapable doom that transcends our own existence (“Black mirror knows no reflection, knows not pride or vanity / Cares not about your dreams, cares not for your pyramid schemes / Their names are never spoken / The curse is never broken, the curse is never broken”). The song is not bad, by any stretch, but it could be improved with a small dose of ambiguity. If there appears to be no hope, there is also no urgency. And without that, the music no matter how well-constructed, can’t help but feel slightly flat.
I am not looking for false optimism that a single individual could somehow fix such deep crises embedded in the structure of our lives. Rather, just some admittance that, in whatever small way, there is hope for something else.
They only take on this project once, in what ought to have been the album closer: “No Cars Go.” It’s strange that a song written long before the rest (released before Funeral on the Arcade Fire LP) could be such a perfect capstone. Whereas most of the album is full of lyrical flourishes, this song is a lesson in simplicity, with lyrics that do not really progress beyond “We know a place where no planes go / We know a place where no ships go / Hey! / No cars go”. Against the nightmare of a distant and detached society, they offer a utopian dream of transcending the confines of a post-industrial society so fixated on movement that it has lost the ability to imbue itself with meaning. It is the light at the end of the tunnel, which perhaps is powerful precisely because it is placed in contrast to the hopelessness of the earlier songs. Perhaps, we are left to wonder, that terminal blackness was prophetic instead of descriptive, a warning.
We are then left to ponder the album’s title: Neon Bible. Holiness is corrupted, transcendence is made material, and all that which we ought to value is burned on the altar of our own sanctity. In that context, this song is the true rebirth, the resurrection of our own beliefs and desires – a ‘Hallelujah’ uttered in the spirit of simplicity. It is telling that one small variation on the chorus produces the line “Us kids know.”
It is the climax long-awaited, not just thematically, but also musically – with a bubbling pace and a looseness that cannot be found earlier.
And yet, we are still left to wonder: is this the ray of hope it seems to be, or is it instead a sly take on a post-apocalyptic world. Is it a prayer for peace or a grim warning of all that we might destroy? Perhaps it is both – a recognition that our greatest discoveries become our worst mistakes, but also that we are not completely adrift in a sea without meaning.
It is ultimately up to the individual listener to decide. Does this song, in all its beauty and complexity, crack the façade of hopelessness cultivated elsewhere on the record? Does the unfortunate decision to include the melodramatic “My Body is a Cage” drag the record down just as it was reaching escape velocity? I remain undecided. As I listen more, the fissures may wider, the pathos may deepen, and its emotional resonance may grow. Or not. But the fact that after so many listens I am still struggling to define my relationship with the record by itself proves that they have created something with far more depth than the usual musical fare.
This invites a final point: Neon Bible deserves to be listened to the whole way through. In an era of MP3s, it’s very easy to siphon off a couple of the best tracks and ignore the rest of the record. On most records, you won’t lose anything from doing so. This is not such a record. “Intervention” is a great song, but it is far more powerful in the context of the album’s progression. And while “Black Mirror” fails to appeal to me all that much on its own, when counterpoised with “No Cars Go” the reverberation of meaning and tone creates a gestalt whole that transcends each individual component.
The final verdict: this is a very good record. It might be a great one. Either way, there is no denying that the run of seven tracks from “Intervention” to “No Cars Go” is as good as anything you’ll hear this year.
MP3:
Black Mirror