After the groundbreaking release of "Funeral" in 2004, Arcade Fire set themselves up for a sophomore slump. Shortly after it hit the market, "Funeral" topped every music snob's album of the year charts, and even garnered mainstream radio play. Shows were immediately booked and repeatedly sold out. As the largest grossing album from Merge Records since Neutral Milk Hotel's "Aeroplane Over the Sea" (1998), "Funeral" became the gigantic shoes for the fledgling band from Montreal to fill.
With the release of "Neon Bible," Arcade Fire has surely met their challenge, even despite taking the much talked about risk of self-producing the album. In fact, the process of selecting tracks was simple, needing no guidance from any hot shot producer. In his blog entitled "Win's Scrapbook," front man Win Butler admitted to leaking over 100 tracks on Myspace.com under false band names, compiling the 11 most popular tracks on "Neon Bible." What may seem like a cheap move toward commercial success is truly smart, effectively weeding out any mediocre songs, leaving only the cr??me de la cr??me.
"Neon Bible" establishes a dark charm with its eerie pipe organs and a consistent minor key. Butler has stated that the songs remind him of standing at the ocean's edge at night, indicating an awareness of the gloom surrounding the album through lyric and instrumentation. In addition to the unlikely pipe organ, Arcade Fire makes use of other instrumental rarities such as the hurdy gurdy, a military choir and a full Hungarian orchestra.
The choice to use the military choir and the pipe organ are quite ironic due to their associations with a combatant America and religion, two topics scrupulously questioned throughout the album. In "Intervention," the churchy organ melody is offset by Butler's voice, wobbling with emotion over lyrics like, "Working for the church while your life falls apart/ Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart."
The title track, quite obviously from its name, also deals with religion. Borrowing its name from a John Kennedy Toole novel, "Neon Bible" perfectly embodies the eerie charm spotted throughout the album. Butler's rough, shaky voice is overlaid by that of R?©gine Chassagne, his wife and bandmate. Chassagne's sing-song delivery is perfectly chilling, whispering the title of the song, as Butler declares, "Not much chance for survival/If the Neon Bible is right."
Ethereal, dark songs aside, there are a few upbeat tracks on the album, including the enrapturing "Keep the Car Running." The string arrangements and drumbeat have been cleverly composed in a thumping rhythm, suggesting the motion of a car. This song is most like those found on "Funeral," with its jump-around musical build-ups and deflations.
Every track on "Neon Bible" is musically rich, showing that it helps to have eight or so people contributing their talents to a band, rather than the usual guitar, bass and drums setup.
Arcade Fire's unique choice of instruments alongside the sheer number of band members helps to set them apart from an increasingly homogeneous indie rock style.
However, in "Antichrist Television Blues," Arcade Fire attempts a simpler, bluesy sound, which is glaringly outside their comfort zone. Their stab at true blues is not entirely successful, but their spin put on "normal" blues in addition to once again religion-questioning lyrics creates something entirely new, interesting and even danceable.
Butler's voice adapts to a blues style here, oddly sounding a little like Bruce Springsteen.
The charmingly dark aura returns once more for the album's finale, the swaying ballad "My Body is a Cage." With beautifully soft imagery of a man being trapped by himself, the song is more like a sung poem of self-truth, complete with phrase repetition and rhymes. In its entirety, the final track is flawlessly epic.
Butler is not alone in announcing the feel of "Neon Bible" to be something like standing along the ocean's shore at night; it is dark with a sense of subtle beauty. In addition to its musical ingenuity and delightfully eerie feel, it contains debate-inspiring lyrics that are religiously (or anti-religiously) charged. Together, these elements create a dynamic power rarely contained in a single album.
