OK, I have to admit it. I've just discovered Arcade Fire. Eight years after they burst on to the scene with what I now know to be a brilliant 1st long-playing record called Funeral. Later, it turns out, they kicked off their 2010 concert tour in support of the Grammy Award-winning LP The Suburbs right here in the Twin Cities. And I missed 'em.
Good God. Where to start?
Well, the first I heard of Arcade Fire was of course The Suburbs. I mean, you couldn't miss that with all the awards it won in the year following that St. Paul concert, including the Grammy for Album of the Year. So I picked up a copy and thought, yeah, it's a nice little record. Clever. Understated. Rich. Colorful. Really nice modern rock. Listened 3-4 times, put exactly 3 tunes on I-Tunes ("The Suburbs," "Wasted Hours" and "Deep Blue"), and put it away on the shelf.
Big mistake.
I don't even remember now what set me to giving them another listen, but having done so I have of course gone back and listened to The Suburbs several times in the past week. Well, in addition to the 3 tunes listed above, there are at least 3 more songs here that, just taken on their own, are terrifically listenable pop tunes. I mean "Modern Man," "City with No Children" and "We Used to Wait." In fact, "Modern Man," with its trippy little rhythm and minimalist guitar figure, has replaced "Wasted Hours" as my favorite from this record.
But all of the songs take on an added power and poignancy if you pay attention (as I had not done) to the story arc, based on Win and Will Butler's upbringing in the Houston suburb of Woodlands, TX. According to Win, the album "is neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs – it's a letter from the suburbs." Everything from adolescent friendships and pranks, to teen love and lust, and to rioting in the streets--it's all there, and summarized in some powerful images in the video for "The Suburbs." The title track creates a mood of excruciating ambiguity with its juxtaposition of happy-go-lucky rhythms and that profound sadness looking back on innocence lost.
"The summer that I broke my arm/I waited for your letter/I have no feeling for you now/Now that I know you better/I wish that I could have loved you then/Before our age was through"
"In my dream I was almost there/Then they pulled me aside and said you’re going nowhere/I know we are the chosen few/But we waste it/And that’s why we’re still waiting"
"You always seemed so sure/That one day we’d be fighting/In a suburban war/Your part of town against mine/I saw you standing on the opposite shore/But by the time the first bombs fell/We were already bored"
The violence is penny ante compared to, say, The Wall, but the feeling of alienation is no less powerful, even in those rare lyrics that look forward rather than looking back:
"So can you understand/Why I want a daughter while I’m still young?/I want to hold her hand/And show her some beauty/Before all this damage is done/But if it’s too much to ask, if it’s too much to ask/Then send me a son"
The irony, of course, is that powerfully emotive and emotional and alienated lyrics aren't the only power that Arcade Fire has to offer. LIVE it's perhaps the most energetic band since the heyday of Springsteen or the Stones or maybe the Talking Heads. They create a wall of sound that is largely missing on The Suburbs. So it can now be said--it must be said--that The Suburbs is not their best work. Arcade Fire is at its best LIVE IN CONCERT, and it is at its best playing several tunes from the first two records--those of course being "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)." "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" and "Rebellion (Lies)" from Funeral, and "Antichrist Television Blues" and "Intervention" from Neon Bible.
And having now watched at least a half dozen or more live performances of each--not to mention at least a dozen, maybe 15, other songs performed live--it becomes crystal clear that this is THE ROCK 'N ROLL BAND OF THE 21ST CENTURY and Win Butler is one of the two or three most consequential pop music personalities working today.
What stands out is, well, lots of things. First of all is the energy. Every musician in constant motion, so elegantly, so stylishly. And Win Butler, so charismatic with that smoldering intensity, spitting out those provocative lyrics. So ambiguous. I wonder, is/was he a nice boy? Or not so nice? I think, not so nice. The band endured some widely publicized frictions in its early days. The band endured. Some of the players, no. Butler, I take it, overwhelmed them, and they left. I'd say he's kind of a Roger Waters type. There it is, that Pink Floyd connection again. The dark side. Yes, but so much energy, so charismatic, so colorful.
The stage show, in fact, recalls the Talking Heads more than anybody. And sure enough, there on YouTube, there's a cover of the Heads' "Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place)" with multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Regine Chassagne (also Win's wife) doing a rather poor impression of David Byrne as marionette. But otherwise it's Win doing the David Byrne role, singing and hogging the spotlight despite all the dash and color that his bandmates provide.
Further mindful of Talking Heads is Arcade Fire's female contingent, still something of an oddity in the world of rock 'n roll. In addition to the Haitian pistol, Regine, are violinists Sarah Neufeldt and Marika Anthony-Shaw. Regine and Sarah, generally untethered to fixed instruments (i.e. keyboards, drums), provide much of the band's visual flair and kinetic energy.
Secondly, there's that wall of sound. No wonder reviewers have found it necessary to describe Arcade Fire by reference to Radiohead. (These are, after all, the best progressive rock 'n roll records since OK Computer.) I also hear echoes of U2 and (as noted) Pink Floyd, the Stones, Springsteen, Talking Heads, all the epic bands with their wall of sound fairly shouting, Hey, world, we have something to say. Listen to us.
It's a wall produced live by at least eight, sometimes nine, sometimes more musicians: Two full-time violins and part-time horns, xylophone, hurdy-gurdy and sundry others that provide another brick in that wall and/or provide an exotic sound that is unlike any other band playing today.
Put them all together and it's a tsunami of sound, it washes over you, and you just ride along and hold on for dear life. But just when you think, no, this is too precious, too much atmosphere--violins and xylophones and other fru-fru--then there's Will Butler (on bass) and Jeremy Gara (on drums) pounding out the driving rhythms of Arcade Fire's best songs. And of course Tim Kingsbury's guitar sings and screeches and everything in between. This is rock 'n roll at its heart.
Third is that the concept of The Suburbs as "a letter from the suburbs" is nothing new. Here on Funeral--again, dating all the way back to 2004--are not one, not two, not three, but four songs titled 'The Neighborhood." One is subtitled (and often referred to simply as) "Tunnels." The second is sub-titled "Laika." The third, "Power Out," and the fourth "7 Kettles." All introspective, idiosyncratic looks at life through the eyes of an adolescent fascinated by but not yet a part of and ultimately deeply alienated from the mature world.
Sure, Neon Bible is a bit more extroverted--mostly, it's a third-party commentary on the influence of television and religion on today's worldview. "People don't necessarily know that they're taking on a worldview, or absorbing ideas while watching television," Win said. "I find it very easy to get sucked in." "Antichrist Television Blues" is a devastating stream-of-consciousness commentary on TV preachers, reminiscent of Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and and Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., in its break-neck speed and its avalanche of lyrics running to fully three-pages of lyrics on the booklet that comes with the CD. And, surely it is Win's "bad boy" that is able to so fully realize the corrupt preacher trying so desperately to convince his daughter to sing professionally....
"Do you know where I was at your age?/Any idea where I was at your age?/I was working downtown for the minimum wage/And I'm not gonna let you just throw it all away!/I'm through being cute, I'm through being nice/O tell me, Lord, am I the Antichrist?!"
Still the album's most popular song, "Keep the Car Runnin'," is sung in the first person and represents Butler's more introverted--should I say self-centered?--side, as if to say that, hey, ultimately, it's about me and about how it feels to me, living as a "Modern Man" in this modern world:
"Every night my dream’s the same/Same old city with a different name/Men are coming to take me away/I don’t know why but I know I can’t stay.... Keep the car runnin'"
Great art is nothing if not obsessive.
Top Arcade Fire Songs
1. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)--Funeral
2. Antichrist Television Blues--Neon Bible
3. Rebellion (Lies)--Funeral
4. Modern Man--The Suburbs
5. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)--Funeral
6. City with No Children--The Suburbs
7. We Used to Wait--The Suburbs
8. Intervention--Neon Bible
9. Wasted Hours--The Suburbs
10. Keep the Car Running--Neon Bible
11. The Suburbs--The Suburbs
12. Wake Up--Neon Bible
13. Deep Blue--The Suburbs
14. No Cars Go--Neon Bible
15. Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)--Funeral
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