oscillations.
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I was faced with a choice at a difficult age.
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Post by oscillations. on Feb 16, 2007 19:43:36 GMT -5
great news! I was hoping they'd secure an SNL spot. SNL is getting better about letting innovators perform on their show.
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juhn
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Post by juhn on Feb 19, 2007 1:27:09 GMT -5
Unimpressed with the album so far. But I'm only on Track 2. "Keep The Car Running" sounds like.... Elvis? LOL, I don't know. I just don't like it. "Black Mirror" is dull.
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Post by reception on Feb 19, 2007 14:00:07 GMT -5
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 20, 2007 17:20:42 GMT -5
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 21, 2007 18:23:53 GMT -5
ROLLING STONEArcade FireNeon Bible3.5 of 5 StarsThe key to all that is right, weird and nobly flawed about Arcade Fire's second album is in the next-to-last song, "No Cars Go." Written by the Montreal band's founding singers, Win Butler and his wife, Regine Chassagne, "No Cars Go" -- a teens-on-the-lam anthem about starting a new Eden, out where there are no roads -- first appeared on Arcade Fire, a self-released 2003 EP. On that record, the song was a midtempo run wrapped in what sounded like a couple of old accordions the group found gathering dust in an abandoned wilderness cabin. The version on Neon Bible shows the difference a bigger production budget and a quantum leap in fear, everywhere you turn, can make. The basics remain: the simple, infectious melody; the singing-telegram lyrics ("Us kids know/ No cars go. . . . Hey!"). But the song now takes off like an army of Harleys on a dirt track (drummer Jeremy Gara's accents jolt the rhythm like potholes), and the arrangement is atomic melodrama -- strings, brass and refugee-choir vocals ringing in Grand Canyon-like echo. Like almost everything on Neon Bible, the follow-up to Arcade Fire's 2004 full-length debut, Funeral, "No Cars Go" is excess with a point: we are drowning in the unspeakable and running out of air and fight. If only everything else on Neon Bible made that point with the same dynamic overkill. It's strange enough that Arcade Fire chose to cover themselves after just two records. It's stranger still that such a big band -- now seven members, playing a symphony's worth of instruments among them -- can sound so distant here so often. The reverb on Funeral was distinct but restrained, coating Arcade Fire's rousing, Balkan-dance-band jump in an early-Eighties New Wave atmosphere that perfectly suited Butler's neo-operatic tenor. If Echo and the Bunnymen singer Ian McCulloch is looking for a long-lost twin brother, he can start looking in Quebec. But on Neon Bible, the reverb is so big and black that the beat becomes boom and the orchestral garnish, arranged by Chassagne and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, gets pressed to the margins. The result is a huge sound that only sparkles on the edges, leaving Butler alone in the middle, railing against rising tides, falling bombs and the nonstop rain of shit on television like he's singing from the pulpit of an empty cathedral. Maybe that was the idea. Neon Bible is an aggressively gothic record, explicitly so in the pipe organ that soars over the hunger and wreckage in "Intervention." More intriguing are "Black Mirror" and "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations," which somehow combine the oppressive dread on Side Two of David Bowie's Low with the church-bells-in-the-rain reveille of U2's Boy. "Neon Bible" is even bleaker, a soft two-minute eulogy for a generation blinded by chain-store signs and laptop-computer glow. "A vial of hope and a vial of pain/In the light, they both looked the same," Butler sings through whispering cellos and child-angel harmonies, like Leonard Cohen wandering through the third Velvet Underground album. But there is determined resistance here too, a twisted faith in escape that comes through best when Arcade Fire hit the gas pedal. "Keep the Car Running" is a gripping chase scene -- Butler on the run from some kind of gestapo -- with crisply strummed mandolins and a racing pulse. Even better is the wordy delirium of "(Anti-Christ Television Blues)." The reverb does the lyrics no favors, obscuring big chunks of the thirteen verses. But at the end of this torrent of 9/11 trauma ("The planes keep crashing, always two by two") and blasphemous prayer (a minimum-wage-slave dad asks God to make his daughter a TV star), an avenging spirit cuts through -- "I'm through being cute," Butler snaps, "I'm through being nice" -- that runs deep in Neon Bible. It's too bad you can't always hear it. DAVID FRICKE
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Post by jaxxalude on Feb 21, 2007 18:27:27 GMT -5
NMEArcade Fire criticise U2 and OasisWin Butler talks exclusively to NMEArcade Fire have criticised the marketing strategies of band's like U2, Oasis and The Rolling Stones. Speaking in the new issue of NME, frontman Win Butler had a go at bands who aggressively force feed their music to fans. Butler said: "It's not like we shun success, but at the same time we don't' want to shove it down people's throats. In the UK there's this kind of rock star competition. "I don't know if U2 started it, or The Stones or Oasis but a lot of bands think in terms of: 'I'm going to be the biggest band in the world. Fuck all those bands who've got no ambition'. I think that's a total crock of shit. "There's nothing less interesting to me than the idea of marketing the fuck out of something so people are forced to like it. Some bands are just manipulating people to buy music. That's how 90 per cent of the record industry works! It's basically the same as selling a fucking toaster or a cruise package." ==============================================//===================================================== "Some bands are just manipulating people to buy music. That's how 90 per cent of the record industry works! It's basically the same as selling a fucking toaster or a cruise package."No, really, Win?!
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Feb 27, 2007 22:04:06 GMT -5
I can't believe no one bumped this after that orifice-dilating performance on SNL! f**king bloody fantastic. I made everyone I know watch it, and they all became fans (exposure is 95% of conversion). Get proselytized! Arcade Fire Merge album: Neon Bible track: Black Mirror Highly anticipated follow-up to Grammy-nominated debut. Sat Night Live - this weekend!!! (02.24). Strong airplay @ KROX, WFNX, WWCD, WXRT, CIMX, CIDR, KBZT, KRBZ. Early single add ‘Keep the Car Running” @ KNDD. Coachella Festival (04/28). Blender (May) Cover, RStone, New Yorker, + more. LP streets 3/6, Shipping over 200k. Mgmt: Scott Rodger/Quest Mgmt. I'm shocked they are only shipping 200k. That's kind of what I expected first week sales to be.
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Post by joker on Mar 1, 2007 17:14:59 GMT -5
[url=http://music.riverfronttimes.com/2007-02-28/music/ montreal-orchestra-geeks-the-arcade-fire-explore-the-intricacies-of-religion-on-their-new-cd/]Riverfront Times[/url] Montreal orchestra geeks the Arcade Fire explore the intricacies of religion on their new CD.Neon Bible, is a worthy follow-up to 2004's Funeral.By Annie Zaleski Published: February 28, 2007 The orchestra geeks in the Arcade Fire sure know how to keep fans salivating over their new record, Neon Bible. Between multiple-night concert stands in select cities; a charity single, "Intervention," put up for sale on iTunes (after "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" was mistakenly leaked first); and the Web site www.neonbible.com — with a phone number, 1-866-NEON-BIBLE, that stereogum .com operatives said band members actually answered — it's enough to drive fans of the Montreal collective mad. This mysterious Internet presence is perhaps the most puzzling part of the publicity blitz leading up to Bible's March 6 release. After clicking through www.neonbible.com's front page, highlight the "Lyrics" link on the next page. Up pops a serene-looking child dressed in a prim frock, reading a "book" that actually links to Neon Bible's lyrics — and, curiously, to the fable "The Wolf and the Fox" by seventeenth-century French poet Jean de la Fontaine. De la Fontaine's story goes something like this: One night, a fox finds a well with a giant wedge of cheese at its bottom; to get within noshing distance, he climbs down to it in a bucket. But his weight causes another bucket to rise to the surface of the well, thus stranding him to certain death — that is, until he convinces a wolf that meanders by to eat the cheese as well. Wolf climbs into the empty bucket and heads for the wedge, fox rises to the well's top — and voilà! Fox one, wolf zero. So this clearly raises the question: What does this have to do with the Arcade Fire's new record? Well, everything — if one considers the last line of de la Fontaine's piece ("Our faith is prone to lend its ear/To anything which we desire or fear") in the context of Bible's apparent-cousin "The Well and the Lighthouse." The song's protagonist greedily mistakes moonlight glinting off water at the bottom of a well for riches, causing a fox-like character to exclaim, "You fool, now that you know your end is near; you always fall for what you desire or what you fear!" In other words: Is religion really there when we want something or are afraid — or does the folly of greed overshadow all? These questions and others are explored (although not exactly answered) on Bible, which is a dense, academic album fixated on questions of spirituality, religion and the concept of self — and, more specifically, how to reconcile these things in a bleak world where uncertainty is the norm, hope seems dead, and God isn't exactly benevolent. (That is, if He exists at all.) This approach is quite a change from the group's 2004 breakthrough, Funeral, which ruminated heavily on aging and the death-rebirth Mobius strip — albeit from a perspective of possibility: The path blazed by the Grim Reaper is lit by a "lightning bolt," while countless mentions of "light" and staying awake permeate the lyrics, all classic literary allusions to knowledge and truth. But Bible's outlook is largely rife with the terror of blankness and darkness: The string-buoyed swoon "Windowsill" talks of being trapped in a house by rushing water ("The tide is high, and it's rising still") while "Black Mirror" — a thunderstorm-like musical cousin to Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon" — speaks of "waking from a nightmare" to see "no moon, no pale reflection." Explicit references to wars, bombs and a vaguely sinister "they" also abound, as if physical violence, if not spiritual nihilism or Big Brother, threatens the world's livelihood. Even the phrase "Neon Bible" is telling, as its gaudy connotation conjures a lesser form of worship where redemption is impossible because free will is nonexistent: On the title track, there's "not much chance for survival if the Neon Bible is right" — because in its pages, "a vial of hope and a vial of pain, in the light they both looked the same." The most positive lyrics on Bible come within the uptempo, daybreak yelp "No Cars Go," which makes sense, since that song dates from the Arcade Fire's 2003 debut EP. And in true ambiguous Bible fashion, it's unclear whether this optimistic outlook influences the album's final track, "My Body Is a Cage." A hollow, creepy song that begins a cappella and ends with ponderous death-march organ, "Cage" encapsulates the album's struggle of head vs. heart, of overcoming external barriers. "My body is a cage that keeps me dancing with the one I love," Win Butler croaks throughout, "but my mind holds the key" — an idea that eventually crescendos by the end to a cry of "set my spirit free." To live? To die? You decide. Unsurprisingly, Bible lacks the Talking Heads-esque childish playfulness and jug-band jubilation of Funeral, and there's nothing as gut-punching as "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" or as catchy as "Rebellion (Lies)." In fact, Bible sounds more like a somber funeral than Funeral does; minor chords, cherubic harmonies, and sprawling, chilly string-and-horn arrangements combine for fire-and-brimstone hymns and stormy sea lullabies. (The exceptions are the bouncy swagger of "Keep the Car Running" and "(Antichrist Television Blues)," both of which are dead ringers for Bruce Springsteen.) But the album isn't boring; it's just more subtle, more challenging, more immense and a quintessential headphones album. So is Neon Bible good? Yes. Is it better than Funeral? Well, apples and oranges. Bible's the type of album on which college English classes and doctoral theses are built — but it's also an album that, like Funeral, fosters community (just check out any YouTube clips of recent live shows or the fevered message board brainstorming about hidden messages). Despite questioning traditional religious avenues, the Arcade Fire is its own self-contained religion for the disenfranchised and searching, for post-college kids stuck in dead-end cubicle jobs who miss using their brains and can't relate to organized worship — but long for the mystery of the spiritual unknown. — Annie Zaleski
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banet2001
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Post by banet2001 on Mar 2, 2007 12:21:38 GMT -5
Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
5 StarsMake no mistake, writes Paul Mardles, greatness is within the grasp of the startling Canadian art rock septet Like all great albums there were no real precursors to Arcade Fire's astonishing debut. Despite being infused with the pungent stench of death - as indicated by the title, Funeral - it erupted from the speakers with an awe-inspiring vigour that very few, if any, indie rock sets have possessed. In fact, indie rock does scant justice to an album that referenced Haiti, featured snippets sung in French and - while unquestionably a modern artefact - made explicit its regard for 19th-century chamber music in the shape of a surfeit of violins and harps. For all that, though, and the praise bestowed on it by critics, Funeral wasn't one of 2005's bestselling albums, losing out to the Blunts and Coldplays of this world. Perhaps that's why its follow-up, mostly stunning though it is, sacrifices Funeral's extraordinary flights of fancy in favour of a marginally more conventional template. This time round there are no vampires lurking in the shadows (as there were on Funeral's 'Laika') and fewer masterclasses in disciplined chaos. '(Antichrist Television Blues)' sounds promising but, disappointingly, it strikes the set's sole bum note, being a largely nuance-free homage to Bruce Springsteen, all jaunty boogie woogie and blue-collar imagery ('You gotta work hard and you gotta get paid'). But what remains unchanged is when they're good, really good, as they are on the magical 'Ocean of Noise' and the simmering, church-baiting 'Intervention', the Canadian septet are the greatest art rock group since Talking Heads stopped making sense. In part this is due to frontman Win Butler, who is the singer Ian McCulloch might have been had the Echo and the Bunnymen mouthpiece invested every line with a sense of dread. 'There's a great black wave in the middle of the sea,' he howls on the incredible 'Black Wave/Bad Vibrations', which starts like the B-52s at closing time and ends, a mere three-and-a-half minutes later, with the sound of the earth cracking at the seams. But then Arcade Fire are that kind of band; dark and unpredictable, explosive and restrained, au fait with global warning yet immersed in their own world. And troubled though they might be by the threat of Armageddon ('Mirror, mirror on the wall, show me where their bombs will fall,' runs the slow-burning opener 'Black Mirror'), for Arcade Fire, if no one else, the future looks rosy. observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/10bestcds/story/0,,2013024,00.html
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 4, 2007 14:52:36 GMT -5
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 5, 2007 1:55:33 GMT -5
THE GUARDIANArcade Fire, Neon Bible 4/5 (Sonovox) Alexis Petridis Friday March 2, 2007 The Guardian Buy Arcade Fire now In 2005, Time Magazine put Arcade Fire on its cover, beneath the banner headline: "Canada's Most Intriguing Rock Band". It's tempting to call that the most underwhelming use of a superlative since Princes Harry and William were dubbed the best-looking members of the royal family, but Time's headline writer had a point. There is something oddly intriguing about the Montreal-based sextet, with their onstage costumes and penchant for performing unamplified in the middle of the audience - an aura of the unknown that seems all the more remarkable given the current desperate shortage of mystique in rock music. A peculiar combination of technology and nosiness has done for it. It's hard to build a romantic myth around rock stars who insist on laying the most humdrum aspects of their life bare in blogs packed with petty grievances: would Iggy Pop have seemed such a heroic figure if, after every Stooges gig, he'd picked the broken glass from his chest, mopped up the blood, put his penis away and hurried home to type 450 words indignantly protesting about the lack of skimmed milk backstage and how the press always sensationalise everything? It's a world from which Arcade Fire have opted out. Most members of the band decline to be interviewed at all. Frontman Win Butler acquiesces only occasionally, and when he does, the results lead you to fear he may be waging a lonely war against media intrusion that involves trying to bore the world's journalists to death, one by one. One section of their website is tantalizingly titled Personal Secrets. Click on it, and you discover that one member has posted, without explanation, three blurred pictures of himself trying out various sit-on lawnmowers. If anything, Arcade Fire's second album seems even more shrouded in mystery than their debut, 2004's 500,000-selling Funeral. Then, Butler sketched in a few autobiographical details to clarify its interest in power cuts, ice storms and Haitian dictator Baby Doc Duvalier; this time, he's been less forthcoming. But if specifics are thin on the ground, you hardly need anyone to point out its overall preoccupation. The first intimation of coming Armageddon arrives fewer than 90 seconds in and Neon Bible is still waving its End is Nigh placard as it draws to a close. Every song is replete with dread, nameless or otherwise: you're never far away from a rising tide or a grim prognosis or persons unknown kicking in your door in the dead of night. The sources of the apocalyptic disquiet are diverse - Windowsill manages to finger both "a holy war", and, more originally, MTV - but the end result never varies: "a time is coming - all words will lose their meaning", "not much chance of survival", "nothing lasts forever". Nor does there seem much chance of the end of days being enlivened by the reappearance of a Messiah. The Christian figures on the album are subject to mockery. Building Downtown (Antichrist Television Blues) scornfully depicts a God-fearing father who seems to believe he can escape the horrors of the post-9/11 world by pushing his teenage daughter into showbusiness. Intervention is musically breathtaking - it opens with a pipe organ playing a portentous fanfare that quickly resolves into a sort of garage-rock riff, then gradually builds into an utterly glorious climax - but it's fuelled by withering disgust at anyone claiming God is on their side. Intervention is perhaps the prime example of Neon Bible's masterstroke, which is to set all this doom-mongering to joyously uplifting music. There are soaring string arrangements, beautiful backing vocal harmonies, harps and French horns, great welling choruses and, perhaps more surprisingly, thwacking, propulsive rhythms. It's hard to think of another album that rocks in such an epic manner without sounding completely ridiculous. The effect is of a kind of triumphant gloom. The music implies you should be throwing a party at exactly the same time as the lyrics suggest you should be hiding under the table with your jumper pulled over your head. Throughout, it's difficult to work out what the Arcade Fire might have been listening to: a rare and satisfying sensation in 2007, when virtually everything sounds a bit like something else. The album's originality carries you through the odd moment when ambition outstrips ability, not least the closing My Body is a Cage, which rather overdoes the church organ in service of a lyric that sails perilously close to the perennially disheartening topic of how terrible it is being in a successful rock band. But that's a rare misstep on an otherwise remarkable piece of work that at times seems magical. An album this mired in fathomless darkness shouldn't sound so dazzling, but it does. Like the band who made it, Neon Bible is a thrilling enigma.
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roentgenizdat
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Post by roentgenizdat on Mar 5, 2007 3:50:20 GMT -5
I'm shocked they are only shipping 200k. That's kind of what I expected first week sales to be. This Blender article mentions 350K shipped; Mark Pearson from Hits predicts possible first week sales of 100K.
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banet2001
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Post by banet2001 on Mar 5, 2007 10:39:36 GMT -5
I don't think that is a good sign. :( It was 86 earlier last week and it has already slipped to 82. The critics who are big fans of the artists tend to review early, leading to an initial high score and everybody else reviews later, at a typically lower score. It would not surprise me to see the score dip below 80 by the end of the week. Edit: The Metacritic scores are back up to 86.
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Post by joker on Mar 5, 2007 14:26:48 GMT -5
Pitchfork ReviewThe Arcade Fire Neon Bible Rating: 8.4 Sharing its title with a John Kennedy Toole novel, the Arcade Fire's second album is markedly different from its more cloistered predecessor: On Neon Bible, the band looks outward instead of inward, their concerns more worldly than familial, and their sound more malevolent than cathartic. Angry, embittered, and paranoid, but often generously empathetic in their points of view, they target the government, the church, the military, the entertainment industry, and even the basest instincts of the common man. While the group's us-against-the-world stance occasionally comes off as slightly self-righteous or reactionary, their scathingly critical perspective gives weight and direction to their nervy earnestness: If Funeral captured the enormity of personal pain, Neon Bible sounds large enough to take on the whole world. This is evident on the album's incantatory opener, "Black Mirror", whose title derives from a centuries-old device that supposedly foretold future events and allowed viewers supernatural insight the hearts of men. Here, the band holds that mirror up to the world and captures a malevolent reflection. Fitting Neon Bible's more worldly concerns, the Arcade Fire have streamlined the raw, large sound of Funeral into something that achieves the same magnitudinous scale through more economical means. Propelled by inventive guitar work and Jeremy Gara's steady drums, the group pares back anything that might curb the controlled forward thrust of songs like "Black Mirror", "Keep the Car Running", or "The Well and the Lighthouse". These songs don't erupt, but gradually crescendo and intensify. Unlike the cathartic Funeral, Neon Bible operates on spring-loaded tension and measured release. As such, it could strike some listeners as a disappointing follow-up, but the record's mix of newfound discipline and passion will likely imbue it with a long shelf-life. On most songs, the Arcade Fire achieve a headlong forward motion, bolstered by immense church organs and Calexico horns that underscore the angst of Butler's bitter, accusatory lyrics. Perhaps the most noticeable (and promising) development in the band's sound is the more prominent role of Régine Chassagne. If she once sounded studied or mannered, here her angelic soprano projects a tentative hopefulness, making her a capable foil for Win Butler's tense performance. Her contributions to "(Antichrist Television Blues)" and "Black Wave" sound like the vocal equivalent of her soaring string arrangements, co-written with Owen Pallet of Final Fantasy. These changes aren't drastic, but they are significant, especially as they reveal new and interesting touchstones for the band's aesthetic. The influences most commonly associated with Funeral were Davids Byrne and Bowie, but on Neon Bible, it's Bruce Springsteen who appears not only in the wordy songs and aggressive shuffle, but in the compression of so many styles and sounds into one messy, exciting burst. "Ocean of Noise" shuffles furtively on a shoreline samba, due largely to Tim Kingsbury's bassline, while "Bad Vibrations", sung by Chassagne, blends girl-group and new wave performances into a darkly enticing whole. The band never compartmentalizes these styles or consigns them to separate songs, but allows them to blend freely. Although they've expanded their sound, the Arcade Fire's transition into extroversion isn't always smooth or graceful. Neon Bible is full of clunky lyrics, revealing Butler's tendency to overstate and sensationalize. His rhyme schemes are sometimes too deliberate and set-- and no one should be allowed to use the sort of faux-antiquated sentence construction that pops up in lines like "I fell into the water black." "Black Mirror" features one of the record's worst offenders: "Mirror mirror on the wall/ Show me where them bombs will fall." Butler's words, however, have always carried less meaning than the way he sings them and the sound in which his band envelops them, so whenever a line falls flat on Neon Bible, the music, always hurtling forward, picks it up and carries it along. Like many indie artists, the Arcade Fire work best in the album format, and Neon Bible runs on a different-- and in some ways more finely tuned-- mechanical system than its predecessor. It's a shapely work, gracefully building to fall away to build again, as the band sustains a mood that's both ominous and exhilarating. Even "No Cars Go", which originally appeared on their self-titled debut EP, sounds more powerful here than it did in its previous incarnation. As stand-alone tracks, these songs don't make as much sense, which partly explains why those early leaks were so uninspiring. The danger here is inaccessibility: There's only one natural entry point to Neon Bible, and it's "Black Mirror". Everything afterwards flows seamlessly from that song's low rumble and startling imagery-- until the final track. Venturing into the lyrical realm of Trent Reznor, album closer "My Body Is a Cage" seems too eager to wallow in the sort of pained melodrama that fuels the band's detractors. The real disappointment is that Neon Bible doesn't end with "No Cars Go", which easily achieves the release they artfully promise but playfully deny throughout the record's first nine tracks. Not only would it have ended the album on a more generous note, it would have made perfect thematic sense as a final invitation to escape. But despite their conflictedness , the Arcade Fire remain firmly rooted in the here and now. And even as press coverage and fan obsession suggest that the world is making a place for them, the band is still looking for a way to understand that world, and to see it for what it really is-- or at least as it appears in the distorted mirror they hold to it. -Stephen M. Deusner, March 05, 2007
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Post by joker on Mar 5, 2007 14:41:01 GMT -5
Arcade Fire – ‘Neon Bible’ (Sonovox) Released 05/03/07 "The service is definitely still in progress..."by Jason Gregory on 04/03/2007 Think for a moment of the modern world. A place riddled in hostile confrontation because of the quest for personal, political and corporate global dominance. A place suffocating in people’s ignorant spiritual strife and a place where if you can sing two lines of a Robbie Williams song you’re touted as ‘the next big thing’. For too long now there has been no new directive, no new set of commandments to live by and nothing to just simply believe in. Until now that is. At last a new scripture has been written, and it’s something our new saviours Arcade Fire subconsciously and unwittingly implore us to have faith in. After bursting our ear drums – not to mention the music industries then, seemingly unbreakable commercial dominance – in 2005 with the morose yet epic sounding, ‘Funeral’ Arcade Fire could have wilted under the pressure of expectancy with their second album and left only ‘Funeral’ as their lasting legacy. Thankfully however, with ‘Neon Bible’ that hasn’t happened. Crafted in Montreal’s Eglise St Jean Baptiste in their Canadian homeland, it’s an album of; you guessed it, biblical proportions. Ablaze with ecclesiastical pipe organs, harps, pianos, guitars, drums and every other obscure instrument you’d expect only Arcade Fire to be able to incorporate into a song, ‘Neon Bible’ is Arcade Fire anthemically coming to terms with the world that they reluctantly have to live in - from the MTV generation (‘Windowsill’) to the devastation of natural disasters (‘Black Wave’) – before offering a thin slice of salvation from it all (“We know a place where no planes go / We know a place where no ships go”). It’s all a bit ominous from the brooding, stirring opening of ‘Black Mirror’ which sees Win Butler anticipating the black mist fast approaching in the distance. “Mirror, Mirror on the wall show me where them bombs will fall,” he sings, while the rest of the band back him with an orchestral concoction befitting of the impending impact. Whereas ‘Funeral’ saw the band musically mourning the deaths of close relatives, now they’re dealing with something rather more accessible to the rest of us – the state of the world. The electro ‘Black Wave’ continues the dark outlook with Win and his wife Régine exchanging vocal vows whilst seemingly touching on the devastation of the Asian Tsunami. “There’s a great black wave in the middle of the sea.” Indeed, throughout ‘Neon Bible’ plaintive human emotions are expressed over a musical backdrop of raw and relentless omnipotent power. From the driving intrepidness of the ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ sound-alike ‘Keep The Car Running’ to ‘Intervention’ - which sees Arcade Fire borrow most heavily from the ecclesiastic womb that the album developed in – which touches on the fear of confrontation while pipe organs converge with a choir of haunting backing vocals. Then there’s the ticking acoustic guitar and yet more swirling vocal support in the prayer-like address, ‘(Antichrist Television Blues)’ which frowns at the mendacity of society post 9/11. It’s all a far cry from the confined, personal-to-them lyrics of ‘Funeral.’ Arcade Fire haven’t completely opened their hearts to us, however. There’s still the mystique that they (and we, deep down) crave to maintain. Most notably in the albums closer, ‘My Body Is A Cage’ where the personal pain gushes out of Win’s blues infused lungs when he sings, “Set my body free / Set my spirit free”. It’s just now however; we know that what’s getting him down is the society that we all live in. Through the bleak adversity it seems that there is a glimpse of hope though. For Arcade Fire it’s expressed in the updated, anthemic orchestral journey, ‘No Cars Go’. For here, the band sound like genuine pilgrims searching for an absolution. It’s escapism at its finest and most pure, and will leave hairs on necks erect for its symphonic duration. Although 21st century life may be a torrid period to have to live in, it’s never sounded so good or euphoric as it does on ‘Neon Bible’. And while Arcade Fire may still be rocks great enigma, they’ve proven here that they’re also one of rocks greatest assets. The service is definitely still in progress. (part 1) gigwise.com/contents.asp?contentid=28785(part 2) gigwise.com/contents.asp?contentid=28785&p=2
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Post by joker on Mar 5, 2007 20:12:16 GMT -5
www.suntimes.com/entertainment/derogatis/281872,SHO-Sunday-dero04.article It's all about the groovesWithout warning, the Arcade Fire's latest will get under your skinBY JIM DeROGATIS Confronted by the occasional reader who protests that he or she just doesn't "get" hip-hop, electronic dance music or certain styles of world beat -- "It's not music, it's noise!" -- like many critics, I often counter that the listener's problem may be a limited, decidedly Western and increasingly outdated notion of what music is. From King Sunny Ade to Public Enemy to Chicago house music, many extraordinary sounds emphasize rhythm over melody, and enjoying them only requires a willingness to lose oneself in the glories of the groove. It's a valid argument, and one I believe to the core of my critical being, but I didn't expect to have it about "The Neon Bible," the second, much-anticipated album by Montreal indie-rock heroes the Arcade Fire. And it's especially ironic given the group's fondness for that hoariest of Western musical cliches -- the orchestra -- and the reams that have already been written by college English majors turned bloggers about the deep, deep meanings of singer and bandleader Win Butler's oh-so-literary lyrics. The first half-dozen listens to "The Neon Bible" left me cold and gearing up to cry sophomore slump. The album -- which is being released as a regular CD, a deluxe disc with a 32-page booklet and an old-fashioned double LP -- took most of 2006 to record, with the group primarily working in a Canadian church, as well as studios in London, New York and Budapest, from whence came the symphony and choir. Sure, I heard some memorable hooks in the complicated mix. But they often seemed to sink beneath the bombast, or get lost in the often overblown and operatic sturm und drang. Then I remembered that I initially felt the same way about the band's last effort. Formed after Butler saw his future wife, Regine Chassagne, singing lounge standards in an art gallery at Quebec's Concordia University, the Arcade Fire debuted with a self-titled EP in 2003. The group grew to include seven musicians, now expanded to 10 onstage, including multi-instrumentalist Will Butler, Win's younger brother. The two grew up in Texas, and music was in their blood: Their grandfather, Alvino Rey, was a driving force behind "The King Family Show," an early '60s musical-variety TV program rife with patriotic and spiritual anthems, and a composer of "space age bachelor pad music" such as 1960's "Ping Pong!," a genre classic. Rey's death was one of several referenced in the title of 2004's "Funeral," which many of its ardent admirers -- an esteemed group that includes David Bowie, David Byrne, Coldplay's Chris Martin and U2 as well as all those indie-rock bloggers -- heard as a concept album about continuing in the face of staggering loss. But the band's leader pretty much scoffed at that notion when I spoke to him in 2005. "I just think most writers tend to have some sort of lyrical world: They use a lot of similar images and words in songs, not as an intentional thing, but just as ideas they keep coming back to," Butler said. "A lot of times songs in the same period of time will be dealing with similar ideas and try to get at them from a different angle. I tend to not write things down too much, in terms of lyrics or melodies, so if I'm singing something in the shower and I remember it two weeks later, it's usually a sign that it's good." If the "similar images and words" flowing out of Butler last time seemed to deal with death, doom and gloom on a personal level, his perspective this time is from the more apocalyptic scale of world politics ("I don't wanna fight in a holy war / I don't want the salesmen knocking on my door... I can't breathe! I can't see! / World War III, when are you coming for me?" he asks in "Windowsill") and the heavy philosophical basis of religion ("Workin' for the church while your life falls apart / Singing hallelujah with the fear in your heart," he howls after a regale church organ sets the mood in "Intervention"). By his own admission, Butler is a lyrical impressionist, and he does create a dark and ominous vibe that sharply contrasts with the music, which is every bit as rousing, sunny and uplifting as that of fellow ork-popsters the Polyphonic Spree. The difference is that band's Tim DeLaughter writes sketchy lyrics as upbeat as the music, and he's dismissed by hipsters as a cartoon; Butler writes sketchy lyrics at odds with the music, and he's hailed as a genius, though he doesn't approach Nick Cave for Gothic melodrama, and he's yet to give us a political- or religious-themed masterpiece like Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" or "Blood on the Tracks." So how did I come to stop worrying and learn to appreciate, if not exactly love, "The Neon Bible"? Its charms didn't hit me in the shower so much as they wormed their way into my subconscious, when the disc was playing in the background and I wasn't really paying any attention -- until I found myself bouncing along in time. What turned me around on "Funeral" was seeing the band live and experiencing its gleeful abandonment to rhythm. Any fan will tell you that the best moment of an Arcade Fire show is when most if not all of the musicians are hammering away on drums and percussion, creating a massive 4/4 undertow that recalls a less syncopated but just as metronomic and irresistible version of the crazy rhythms championed by New Jersey's cult favorites the Feelies from the late '70s through the mid-'80s. In other words, it's all about the grooves. And if "The Neon Bible" isn't as strong as "Funeral," it's only because fewer of the songs here boast those big, beautiful backbeats: I count five out of 11 lumbering misses, with the title track, "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations," "Ocean of Noise," "No Cars Go" and "My Body is a Cage" simply failing to deliver the goods rhythmically, not to mention melodically or lyrically. It's possible that Butler & Co. will redeem these sullen tracks in concert. But until then, I'll content myself with programming my CD player to hit the high points on "The Neon Bible," which are very good indeed, and which are guaranteed to sweep you away with their percussive powers -- if only you give them the chance.
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 5, 2007 20:35:19 GMT -5
Look who he is. It's King Rockist himself!
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Post by reception on Mar 6, 2007 14:50:26 GMT -5
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Post by joker on Mar 6, 2007 14:58:26 GMT -5
Arcade Loaf: Montreal's most operatic indie band is constantly being compared to Springsteen, but they're much closer to The Boss' more theatrical contemporaryMike Doherty, National Post Published: Tuesday, March 06, 2007 Steinman's oeuvre looks ahead to a quasi-Biblical rock 'n' roll apocalypse: "I find heaven and hell, light and dark, to be eternally exciting conflicts," he says. "From the time I was a little kid, I loved religion for its accessories. I used to go to St. Patrick's cathedral [in New York] just to hear the music and liturgies." Most of Neon Bible was recorded in churches outside of Montreal; what with its shivering strings, big reverb and 500-pipe church organ, the album is as gothic as the lettering on Bat Out of Hell's cover. All the same, the Arcade Fire are hardly reverent: On Saturday Night Live last month, Butler shattered an acoustic guitar. The guitar-smashing Pete Townshend was himself an influence on Steinman: "I had never seen violence so beautifully portrayed," he says of seeing The Who for the first time. "There's a great fun in destroying things and tearing them down, and it's also politically the essence of rock 'n' roll." Significantly, the Arcade Fire, together with bands like The Hold Steady and even The Killers, are apt to write in character, or about events outside themselves. "If I was teaching songwriting," says Steinman, "I would say: 'Stop looking inward.' I can't imagine Wagner sat down and said, 'Let me start a four-part epic cycle about my personal life buying female underwear.' He had a much different mission." Wagner wrote about the twilight of the gods; Meat Loaf sings about "killers on the bloodshot streets," and Win Butler sings about falling bombs --it's all very dire, but it works only if you can enjoy the music viscerally. Hence the exhilarating rhythms and sweeping arrangements that accompany both Meat Loaf's finding paradise by the dashboard light and Win Butler's ode to going where No Cars Go. Canadian musicians (aside from Celine Dion and Rush) have mostly shied away from the grandiose. Nonetheless, Bat Out of Hell first reached platinum status here, and Meat Loaf has claimed, "More people in Canada owned Bat Out of Hell than owned snowshoes" (which is not really that many, but you get the idea). If Neon Bible's hugely uplifting closer, My Body is a Cage, with vocals by a choir of fallen angels, crashing drums that could set a whole army marching and, of course, the pipe organ to end all pipe organs, is any indication, the Arcade Fire could give Steinman a run for his money. As for the songwriter, he played little part in this year's Bat Out of Hell "threequel," The Monster is Loose, but fear not: He's writing new songs for a musical version of the first two albums, to premiere in London in 2008, complete with 3-D animation. Steinman likens it to a musical version of last year's apocalyptic film Children of Men. "The first review of Bat Out of Hell said I'm way over the top," he recalls. "But how are you going to see the other side if you don't go over the top?" www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/artslife/story.html?id=d26b477d-3528-4d94-bcc6-dfb0a25ca7cd&k=63823&p=1
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 6, 2007 18:14:58 GMT -5
Supposedly will battle it out for #1 with no other than...Korn.
I have to buy it tomorrow; I was in a hospital all day yesterday & today I've been shut-in (missing school AGAIN) because it is sub-zero here & I have a paper due tomorrow. I think I'll get the deluxe edition if I see it.
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Post by Devil Marlena Nylund on Mar 6, 2007 19:01:39 GMT -5
I got the regular one. It was $10.99 whereas the deluxe edition was $20.99. I'm not exactly a big AF fan so I passed on it.
I need to warm up to the album but I bet it'll be a 2007 favourite!
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Post by jaxxalude on Mar 6, 2007 19:31:32 GMT -5
Having Korn battle out for the #1 album IN 2007 is proof enough that albums are going the way of the Dodo!
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 6, 2007 21:19:58 GMT -5
If Arcade Fire wins the battle, EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.
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oscillations.
Diamond Member
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I was faced with a choice at a difficult age.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 6, 2007 21:22:21 GMT -5
I got my dad to like the Arcade Fire. His indie/credible modern music transformation is going beautifully. Within the past month, my brother & I have gotten him into the Fire, Metric, BRMC, Talk Talk, Jesus & Mary Chain, The Black Angels, Bloc Party, Primal Scream (he loves "Miss Lucifer"! - never mind the dominatrix imagery it paints), and others. He also thinks Girls Aloud are great. God, I love brainwashing people!
It's all in how you present it. It has to be in an extremely familiar & positive context. YOU HAVE TO EASE THEM INTO IT.
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oscillations.
Diamond Member
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 7, 2007 13:53:21 GMT -5
KEEP THE CHART RUNNING: The initial shipment on Arcade Fire's Neon Bible has reached the unprecedented total of 400k, according to retail watchers, making it the most anticipated album in indie history, and giving it a reasonable chance of topping next week’s sales chart. While the press has played a part in the mainstreaming of the heralded Montreal band, exemplified by a meaty feature in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, in a more fundamental sense Arcade Fire is both the beneficiary and a needle-mover in the radically shifting landscape of today's music industry, which is increasingly becoming a business of myriad niche markets rather than one of blockbusters. (3/7a)
:o This is just beautiful news. I feel like crying, actually.
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Post by busyboy on Mar 7, 2007 14:07:57 GMT -5
If "Neon Bible" hits #1, the mission the Shins started with "Wincing The Night Away" in January will be completed, indie-wise. Let's really hope so...
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oscillations.
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 7, 2007 14:08:59 GMT -5
Seriously, dude.
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Post by busyboy on Mar 7, 2007 14:10:54 GMT -5
And if Arcade Fire can't, Modest Mouse will do so in two weeks!
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oscillations.
Diamond Member
Opinion = Fact
I was faced with a choice at a difficult age.
Joined: February 2005
Posts: 10,130
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Post by oscillations. on Mar 7, 2007 14:12:01 GMT -5
That's right! Or LCD Soundsystem (LOL). Well, James might be able to get Top 30.
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Post by joker on Mar 7, 2007 14:12:17 GMT -5
400k shipped sounds impressive... what are the expected first-week sales based on that?
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