(IndieChrist Television Blues): First Impressions of Neon Bible

The Arcade Fire: what have you heard about them that isn't good? First, Funeral: an instant classic. It surprise carpet bombed the indie world, and countless pretentious and unpretentious listeners were its victims, feeling much akin to that little naked girl with the barbecued arm running down the street in that famous Vietnam War photo. Then: the chaotic, frantic, instrument swapping live shows purportedly frothing with raw emotion and balls out rock. Holy shit, people said, this band can pull off the tangled cacophany of sound that they made on record? Yes, the band responded, now sit down, shut up, and prepared to be shock n awed. When the group rereleased its so-so demo, indie rockers snatched it up like crack-flavored pop rocks, and said they could hear its incredible potential with their special indie hindsight goggles. Yes, hear with goggles. That's what this band fucking does to you.

Then, like Superman in a certain underrated superhero film, they dropped off the face of the Earth, and the Lex Luthors of the near mainstream almost got away with their evil Kryptonite-infused continent (read: good music) swallowing real estate schemes. Well, Supes, er, The Arcade Fire, are back. And do they save they day? Sort of. Maybe. Barely? I mean, Superman just about died tossing the kryptonite island thing into space and couldn't persuade Lois to leave her toolbox of a husband, and that seems fitting here. The Arcade Fire do provide a temporary reprieve from the schlocktastic garbage clogging the airwaves right now (albeit there is seemingly less than there was 3-4 years ago), but they also fail to Baghdadify the scene as before.

Okay, yes, this record is great. I'm hooked - I'm on the verge of dumping this review in favor of listening to it again. But it didn't yank me out of my chair and toss me on the ground like Funeral did. No, this album's a grower. I didn't even like it at first, but as its mood and themes soaked me through, I was able to get a grasp on the changes the band has made, and realize that what they've done here is pretty good in its own right. It is certainly no Funeral, and it is certainly not as influential or genre/year/decade/etc defining as that record. I mean, c'mon, it's the second record. Sequels rarely outdo their predecessors (exception in the aforementioned superhero flick) - hardly anyone ever shits gold twice. Get over it - did you really think, given the circumstances and lack of a scrutinous public eye during the writing of the debut, that another Funeral could be made?

So, what's different here? The tempo is the most noticeable change. There is a distinct softening of the muscular, jarring aspect of Funeral's pace. And there is also a greater uniformity in this - gone are the sudden total turnarounds a la the ends of Wake Up and Crown of Love. The band will still ratchet the intensity up a bit from time to time, but nothing like that first time in Neighborhood #1. That's not necessarily a bad thing - just different. A pensive, rather than explosive Arcade Fire? Okay. They can do it. But this album is generally more repetitious and consistent, which is good and bad. The song structure is less diverse than before, and that is my biggest complaint with this album. The majority of songs end with Win annoyingly repeating a verse over and over and over. The instrumentation is also quite different - it's not quite as guitar centric and it sounds more organic. And a simply epic organ manages to steal the show from the pronounced use of accordion and piano. Sadly Regine has a diminished role in this recording as well - she hardly gets a song of her own here. But, when she does throw her voice into the band's trademark mess of sound, it's fantastic, and chilling.

Indeed, one of the best parts of the band is still here - the chaos. But rather than the fierce whirlwind of Funeral, we are subject to a mellower, murkier, and more mournful conglomeration of instruments. Funeral came through and tore everything apart, and now we are digging through the remains. This album sounds darker and creepier, and frankly its predecessor's title seems to fit it better than Neon Bible, at least on a sonic level. The lyrics are still weird, highly interpretable, thematic, intelligent and stupid all at once. While the yoinked title Neon Bible would imply at least a smidgen of humor considering from whom it was yoinked, it seems more like a portender of the fate of that um, yoinkee. The theme, as I have interpreted it, is of a much wider scale than Funeral's focus on family and love: this is paranoia, World War III, sinking ships, imprisoned passions, decaying societies, and a healthy dash of despair. I'm reminded in a way of Ok Computer. There is a definite water motif here, among others, and that really adds to the albums overall murkiness, both in production and execution. That is the best way I can describe it: murky. This is dark stuff, as the very stark black and white lyric booklet implies, as the threatening piano riffs and evil organ groans accentuate. Really, it's discomforting, especially if one has the same reservations about the world we live in as Win's crazy ass does.

And that is the main reason why this album succeeds over its glaring flaws: though the band has changed, it still has the ability to move the listener through the progression of an actual album. Everyone will agree that Funeral was an old fashioned album, a work of art that was as much of a sum of its parts as it was a construction of several equally excellent pieces. Neon Bible is essentially the same, though it could be argued that it demands even more to be scrutinized as a whole. Indeed, listening to it all the way through is far more effective - it will give you a better perspective on this second outing from the prime ministers (they're Canadian, remember?) of indie rock, making you realize that even the Lester Pearsons of this world fail to follow through on their election speech promises, but we still love them anyway.