Posted: 03/28/07

Arcade Fire
Neon Bible

Patrick Smith| contributing writer
psmith4@smcvt.edu

When a band’s first album is something like trumpeted indie release Funeral, any reaction to the second release has to keep that debut somewhere in mind. On Neon Bible, Arcade Fire make the smart decision of following its debut with something decidedly not Funeral. Fortunately, it is still very much Arcade Fire; the band members know their strengths and play with them.

The emotion, tension, and energy that was pushed outward in sustained bursts on Funeral is turned inward on Neon Bible. On the opener “Black Mirror,” lead singer Win Butler often sounds like he is doing all he can to restrain himself from yelling the whole song. His voice is tense and holding something back. The rest of the band follows suit with their playing, and when they expand for small bursts of external energy, it is quickly brought back, and the tension is there more than ever. This internalization holds true for most of the album.

This isn’t to say that this is a completely somber procession of boredom and depressed dirges. There are slight teases throughout, like “Keep the Car Running” and “The Well and the Lighthouse” that harken back to the feel of Funeral, and they never feel too out of place. They aren’t given time to take over though, “Keep the Car Running” is followed up by the almost whimpering track of “Neon Bible.” Even the most somber tracks, the times when the album goes its darkest, it pushes towards that release. “Ocean of Noise” spends its opening as dark as The Arcade Fire get, with Win quietly singing along to simple piano and tapping drums, then strings swell to beef it up, but it is never allowed to go beyond that “almost” explosion of energy. Throughout, even the most energetic tracks give the sense of a holding back, of an almost painful restraint.

The most interesting thing about this internalization of the energy is that the lyrics are a reflection of an externalization. This is not an album of completely personal emotion or the personal romanticism that can be seen all over Funeral. It is The Arcade Fire acting as artists trying to capture something in the times; Neon Bible is their internalization of the modern zeitgeist.

From the start, there is paranoia; there is pain, confusion, and anger. On “Black Mirror” Butler sings, “Shot by a security camera/You can’t watch your own image/and also look yourself in the eye.” In a time of increased observation and severe questioning of that observation, this appears to be very pointed and specific. They do not stop at political observations, they want to go beyond, to the mood, to the dangers, to the fears that are pressuring themselves and into their own heads and hearts.

With a glance at some track titles and the album title itself, religion is not left out of the world they are taking in. Abroad, and in America, religious tension is heightening, fundamentalists are getting their message out louder, and it frightens this band. On the title track, “Take the poison of your age/Don’t lick your fingers when you turn the page,” religion has gone from being an opiate to a poison that is in the very pages of the book. “Intervention” gives a more literal attack on religion: “working for the Church/while your family dies.”

“(Antichrist Television Blues)" takes on the name of a religious theme and shows signs of it throughout. In addition, it pushes Butler’s tensions and general, nameless fear to the forefront. The majority of the song is his terse words over a quickly tightly, strummed guitar. He rebels against the whole pressure of working and living in this new, so called post-9/11 world, “I don’t wanna work in a building downtown/No I don’t wanna see when/ the planes hit the ground.” He questions God, questions what he is supposed to do in this new time, and how God fits in there. His ending declaration of rebellion, escapism, leads to the final question of the song, “I’m through being cute/I’m through being nice/O tell me, Lord, am I the Antichrist?”

There are soldiers, there is war, there is death. There is the distraction of TV, the 100 dollar dinner plates of a politician's dining fundraiser while people starve. There is MTV, there is America. Cornered by this, fearful, tense and nervous, The Arcade Fire want no part and, even though they are Canadian, they “don’t wanna live in America no more.” Beyond this, they don’t see it stopping, only going further, “cause the tide is high/and it’s rising still,/And I don’t wanna see it at my windowsill”.

When Butler sings “Now who here among us/Still believes in choice?/-Not I!” it would seem Arcade Fire are giving up, and they don’t see an escape. Yet, that feeling is indeed scattered throughout the album. From “Keep the Car Running” there is preparation for escape, they will be ready when the option is there. Though there is the feeling it is coming, the apocalypse isn’t here just yet, “The lions and the lambs ain’t sleeping yet.” The tight arrangements of the songs themselves provide an option, the organs and gospel singers bring enough of a lift that there is relief occasionally, the music can be an escape.

The penultimate track, "No Cars Go," is an old one, redone for the album, but essential in its function. It is the most hopeful, the most cheerful, the most romantic. Escape is finally possible, and it is an almost utopian dream, “We know a place where no planes go/We know a place where no ships go.” The escape is there, at their fingertips. An escape not only from the darkness they see in the times, but also from being average. And true to their nature, it can only take place in the most romantic ways, “Between the click of the light/and the start of the dream.” It is fleeting, almost non-existent, but there it is.

They refuse to leave on that note though, that would be too easy. Instead, they strip everything away on the final track. There are no guitars, it is just the organ and slow drum beats. Along the way, Butler sums up the album’s mood with “my body is a cage/that keeps me from dancing/ with the one I love/but my mind holds the key.” Mind, body, spirit, all exist, all three separate things for Win. In the end, he wants, and believes, that he will be set free, spirit and body, through the mind, and typically love will be waiting.