Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (W/Book) (Dlx)
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Arcade FireEdition: Music CD
Format: Special Edition
CD Release Date: 2007-03-06
Music Label: Merge Records
Soundtracks:
- Black Mirror
- Keep The Car Running
- Neon Bible
- Intervention
- Black Wave/Bad Vibrations
- Ocean Of Noise
- Well & The Lighthouse, The
- Antichrist Television Blues
- Windowsill
- No Cars Go
- My Boby Is A Cage
Free Music Notes for Neon Bible (W/Book) (Dlx)
Free Music Review: A Turn of the Century Trilogy--Part Three
Hit: 5 Stars
Although I thought Arcade Fire's previous album, "Funeral," dragged a bit in places ("Crown of Love," "In the Backseat") and suffered from some tempo changes that sounded forced, it contained some of the most heartfelt songs I had heard by anybody in a long time, especially "Neighborhood #1" and "Rebellion (Lies)." This was clearly a band that was a cut above almost everyone else, and I eagerly awaited their follow-up. I'm happy to report that "Neon Bible" grabbed me immediately, and hasn't let me go. The Bowie/Byrne/U2/Springsteen comparisons are all very apt, but the songwriting is strong enough to give this band an identity all its own.
For me, "Neon Bible" is part three of an accidental trilogy, in which part one was Radiohead's "OK Computer" and part two was Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot." In the distant future, these three albums will tell people a lot about what the end of the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st, felt like for those who lived it. "OK Computer" looked back on the ghosts of the 20th century (who mostly take the form of space aliens) and "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" captured that claustrophobic moment right around the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which it eerily foreshadowed with its "twin towers" album cover and a song called "Ashes of American Flags." (The album was slated to be released on September 11th, but delayed due to problems with the record company.)
And now we have "Neon Bible," which looks straight ahead into the murk of the 21st century. The cover art, with its depictions of children on a stage playing trumpets and reading from big, important-looking books, captures the feeling perfectly: Collectively, we are like those children, making grand gestures but not really knowing what we are doing. Yes, that includes you, Mr. President. The album has been criticized by many for lyrics that they claim are too obvious and music that is too grandiose for its own good, but we need an album like this once in awhile. We need musicians who don't always hide their feelings behind wordplay (which is so often a smokescreen for not having anything to say anyway). Win Butler walks a fine line here, with lyrics that spell out the major themes of the album but still provide plenty of subtlety and mystery for those who care to look for it.
The songs themselves are outstanding from start to finish. The opener, "Black Mirror," is all doom and gloom, set to a thumping beat. Win Butler sounds like a crazed preacher who is calling for damnation to rain down upon us all, because maybe we deserve it. But the mood lightens with the second song, "Keep the Car Running," and from then on, the album alternates darkness and light in a manner that is reminiscent of Love's "Forever Changes." "Antichrist Television Blues" completely lives up to its title, and "Intervention" is another Big Statement that does not disappoint. A more subtle favorite is "The Well and the Lighthouse," which is sort of a parable set to a beat that is like a speeded-up version of "Black Mirror," but this time moving toward a much more hopeful conclusion.
Many listeners will hear "Neon Bible" as a tremendous downer, but then, there are those who say the same thing about Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." Largely it's just a matter of taste whether you like these albums or not, and that's okay. Although they have little in common musically, they are similar in a way. The beauty of the music overcomes the angst expressed in the lyrics, and the end result is exhilarating, and yes, even hopeful. The children pictured in the "Neon Bible" CD booklet may not know what they are doing, but they are still children. It's not too late for them to be saved.
[Note: I have the "deluxe packaging" version of this disc. It comes in a little box that has a pretty cool hologram on the cover, in which the pages of the book appear to turn as you look at it from different angles. Inside, there is a lyric booklet with the pictures I've mentioned, which is probably also contained in the standard version of the CD. There are also a pair of little flip books, one of which depicts a book that is flipping pages (kind of ironic for a flip book, now that I think of it), while the other depicts the synchronized swimmers from the CD booklet splashing in the water. Honestly, I don't see the point of the flip books, but if you want the hologram, the deluxe version may be worth the higher price.]
Neon Bible (W/Book) (Dlx) Poster
The second album from Montreal's Arcade Fire exceeds all expectations. With string and orchestral arrangements by two of the band members, "Neon Bible" is full of both half-assed punk rock mistakes and meticulously orchestrated woodwinds. Processed strings and mandolin. Quiet rumbles and loud rumbles. But mostly just eleven songs that the band thinks are really good. The deluxe CD version is packaged in a hinged box with two 32-page flip books designed by the band. The LP is double 180-gram audiophile quality with three sides of music and an etching on the fourth side. The LP also includes a coupon for a free MP3 download of "Neon Bible". Arcade Fire's 2004 debut "Funeral" has scanned over 300,000 copies and is certified platinum in Canada.For their second full-length, the Montreal-based seven-or-eight-piece Arcade Fire show themselves capable of Big Rock, as original, and as potentially marquee-topping as TV on the Radio and Sigur Ros. Regardless, the intentional murkiness of these pleasantly anthemic New Wave dirges makes it sound as if the music has already reverberated through a crowded cement stadium. Named after cult author John Kennedy Toole's first novel, Neon Bible is smart and subtle enough to present itself as a personal discovery for every listener, every word to be pored over by fans (as with those of Tori Amos, Pavement, and Radiohead). Surely, lines like "The sound is not asleep/ It's moving under my feet" have already been scribbled onto the margins of countless textbooks. Such words are delivered with less intensity this time, but no less import. For vocal influences, lead singer Win Butler seems to have traded his '80s Bowie in for an '80s Springsteen, at least on the songs "Antichrist Television Blues" and "Windowsill" (though "Intervention" sounds an awful lot like '80s era Go-Betweens). The kitchen sink arrangements include the use of an Eastern European orchestra, pipe organ, hurdy gurdy, and a military choir. --Mike McGonigal
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