REVIEW: Arcade Fire "Funeral"

Rating: 10

Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison, and the plague.
- John Armstrong, Composer (Canada)

Nearly three years ago my grandfather died. His name was Norbert. I saw him that summer then again at Christmas. The myloma had returned sometime in between the two visits.

In hospice I held him by his arms so a nurse could bathe him. I walked him to the toilet that way, marveling that someone with so little flesh could move himself at all - guessing that he once helped me walk like that as an infant.

My wife and I came back for the funeral a few months later. I wanted to help but everything except the eulogy seemed to be taken care of, so I volunteered. I combined the notes my Mom made with a few of my own and I wrote a little speech. It made me feel useful, like maybe I could help.

As soon as I approached the podium, and for the years since, I knew I was wrong. No matter what I would say it would have little to do with helping other people. If it did then that was luck. Hearing the right words can make you feel better I suppose, but speaking them heals. That and time.

Fortunately I haven’t had to attend many funerals. When I have I’ve managed to pick up some extra guilt beyond the normal amount we seem obligated to feel. I think it comes from realizing that someone literally had to die to get me to speak to my relatives, and failing to take advantage of that opportunity compounds it. Instead we make small talk about our jobs, vacations, even the weather. Still, we go because it’s important and we mingle because we have to, and we get it mostly wrong every time.

The Arcade Fire got it right. In terms of the whole idea of a funeral, which warrants mention given the album’s title, and just in terms of the music.

I knew I liked it as soon as I heard it. Actually I knew I would like it after I’d had a chance to hear it a few more times. It’s not something that has to grow on you. That implies it might be annoying or somehow unpleasant in another way, which it isn’t. It’s more like something that needs time to grow in you, time to plant itself and find its way.

The Arcade Fire is sort of a family themselves. Win and Regine are married and Win’s brother Will is in the band. Regine’s grandmother died shortly before she and Win married, and they were married shortly before recording began. Win and Will's grandfather died during recording. So did Richard’s aunt Bessie (Richard is in the band). They all live in Montreal, Quebec. Those are the basics, though I did leave out a member or two whose families are presumably intact. You won’t find out a lot from the band’s promo information which seems artfully simple and elusive by design. Elusive but not deceptive, like their sound.

It is hard to pin down, which makes them infinitely more interesting and difficult to write about. I’m resisting the very amateur-feeling urge to tell you to trust me and buy the album, assuring you that you’ll love it or at least see why I think it’s so good. After all, it made the top spot on my best of 2004 list, and I’m in good company recommending it (pitchforkmedia.com). But it’s one of those things that’s hard to talk about. Like why someone likes chocolate. Or doesn’t.

It feels important and unexpected. It is beautiful and artistic without feeling over dressed. It is earnest, urgent and full but not sappy, hurried or indulgent. It is revealing but not embarrassing; cathartic but not weepy. It feels very much alive, and like all living things capable of growth and change.

With that last bit I realize I am doing what this album mercifully avoids; slipping into schmaltz. The Arcade Fire tread a fine line stretched taught over deep, dark pits full of lesser bands babbling streams of platitude. A step too far in any direction and one is likely to join them, remembered immortally as a stoic, cynic, crybaby or cheese-ball. Where others might have sounded trite or melodramatic The Arcade Fire taps into its own combined heartache and strikes a balance between life, love and loss by owning their experiences, good and bad, and finding ways to put them into perspective. They remember what sound like specific events and people with names, and sing of them in alternately stark and glowing light. And in these memories they find a broader truth - flooding raw emotion elegantly channeled through the simplest of all intellectual filters - music.

For those in need of reference points you’ll hear early U2 guitars; Pixies rhythms via Modest Mouse; the cinematic bombast of Neutral Milk Hotel; and an occasional jazz-tinged female vocal performance from Regine who, when given her moment to shine, sounds a little like Bjork. Songs move from one to the next with purpose like chapters in a book while the rich instrumentation and production expand to fill the imagination’s largest, most filigreed hollow halls.

Better yet, in 1964 Diana Ross and The Supremes released “You Can’t Hurry Love,” then 1966 saw the release of “Pet Sounds.” Somewhere in between (and I don’t think I mean 1965) is the foundation of this album’s sound. Tracks #6 and #7, “Crown of Love” and “Wake Up,” draw refreshingly on Motown doo-wop and dreamy bedroom balladry for a mood at once reminiscent, innocent and completely original. Though the album is best heard cover to cover check out the third track “Une Annee Sans Lumiere” for a glimpse at why it is so moving as a whole, with a slow-drawing build of emotion up to the 2:45 mark where all is liberated, released into joy and not despair. Twinkling spots of light from major chords pierce thrombing pipe organ clouds and a drum kicks down heavy wooden doors.

Again, I have stepped in it. I am no match for the wrenching poignancy of lines like “When daddy comes home you always start a fight; So the neighbors can dance in the police disco lights;” or the universality in “They say a watched pot won’t ever boil; You can’t raise a baby on motor oil; Just like a seed down in the soil you gotta give it time."

Hearing the right words might make you feel better, but speaking them heals. That and time. No one should have to deliver more than one eulogy but everyone should write at least one, though few are likely to be as stirring, hopeful and healing as Funeral. I hope it doesn’t take someone dieing to rouse The Arcade Fire to further genius - maybe Win and Regine will have a baby and start writing lullabies.