Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (Sonovox)
5/5
By: Matt Tomiak
There are no jokes on Arcade Fire's second album, 'Neon Bible.' It doesn't do irony. But though it might not be a barrel of laughs, it's a broodingly brilliant collection nonetheless. With 'Funeral', their loss-and-bereavement infused debut of three years ago, the Montreal collective were ruminating in the main on the aftermath of deaths of those close to them. This time around, they've broadened their scope to encompass...well, the lot.
Life, The Universe and Everything are tackled over 11 huge-sounding songs with sombre, earnest gravitas: in its terms of theme and atmosphere, this is an LP to file alongside REM's 'Automatic For The People' and U2's 'The Unforgettable Fire.' Improbably, there are also hints of now-defunct Modesto alt-rockers Grandaddy and their album 'The Sophtware Slump', which dealt with feelings of bemusement and disappointment in the face of overwhelming technological 'improvements.'
'So as the thunderous curtain raiser 'Black Mirror' comes booming out of the stereo speakers, with singer Win Butler's declaration of 'awaking from the nightmare' heralding an inexact, yet impending dread over a feverish piano, it's patently obvious that this is going to be a day-of-reckoning kind of a record. The dark-hued melodicism of Echo & The Bunnymen and runs through 'Keep The Car Running', replete with primal, Bono-esque wails at the close continues this theme.
We're in Joy Division territory with the title track; at a shade over 2 minutes, it's the shortest cut on the record, and finds Butler repeating the desolate, haunting mantra 'Neon Bible, Neon Bible/Not much chance for survival' over a stark, tick-tock bass line.
'Intervention' provides the blistering emotional potency of the most incredible track on their debut, 'Rebellion (Lies)'. Simultaneously invigorating and shattering, it's cathedral-sized opening chords eventually give way to a treatise on the compromises we undertake to negotiate the very act of being: 'You say its money that we need/As if we're the only mouths to feed/ I know no matter what you say/There's some debts you'll never pay' run the lyrics, as the band rise to a celestial musical climax.. 'Don't want to fight/Don't want to die/Just want to hear me cry.' It's an acknowledgement of the ultimate futility of human existence without ever fully abandoning hope completely.
'Ocean of Noise' deals in the stately doomed romantic introspection of The Cure in their prime; 'Antichrist Television Blues',set to an atypically jaunty Dylan-ish backing, finds Butler affecting a Springsteen style croon to document the confused, fearful reflections of a 'Good, Christian man', surveying the landscape of modern urban America and finding only chaos and disorder before him.
The yearning, existential drama of the elegiac 'Karma Police'-esque finale 'My Body Is A Cage' in many ways epitomizes the album. 'My body is a cage/ that keeps me from dancing with the one I love/ but my mind holds the key' wails Butler. 'I'm living in an age/ whose name I don't know/ though the fear keeps me moving/ still my heart beats so slow.' The band absolutely recognize the limitations, frustrations and uncertainties of contemporary living, but, recognize a glimmer of optimism amongst the darkness, and stubbornly refuse to concede total defeat.
And that Radiohead parallel is actually quite a neat way to sum things up. Ten years on from their career-defining opus 'OK Computer', Arcade Fire, like The 'Head, don't see much light at the end of the tunnel. The answers they demand from this uncertain, unstable world aren't readily forthcoming. But, just like Thom Yorke and co., when they implore explanations in such a magnificent manner as this, it hardly seems to matter.
Artists in this article: Arcade Fire
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