Sophomore albums often wade into deeper, darker waters (see Interpol's Antics) and Neon Bible is no exception.
Arcade Fire's second LP builds on the band's top notch, heart wrenching debut, stretching their sound further toward contrasting poles of anthemic strum-and-din pop and spare, gloomy bedroom folk. Dynamic swells grow more quickly, build to a larger scale and last longer, the pacing is pushed until it rattles, and Regine's backing vocals sound like a choir. The specter of Spector looms large in an increasingly dense wall of sound – there’s even a girl-group number ("Bad Vibrations") over an 80s synth pop beat. Then quieter moments open up some space, creating room for Win Butler's pleading tenor over subdued percussion and rhythmic guitar drone.
Thematically the cathartic, healing power of Funeral has largely turned to bitter pill and biting barb. Most songs smolder with a blend of paranoia, despair, disgust and rebellion, all stripped naked as heard in the moving "Windowsill" when Butler sings:
The windows are locked now so what'll it be?
A house on fire or a rising sea?
You know you’re in a pretty dark place when you assume the world is near its end and you're just waiting to see if the apocalypse will be delivered by a few more planes crashing into buildings or by global warming. Equally dire views of politics, religion and pop-culture are exposed, turning Butler’s pitch-perfect barometer away from himself and onto a CNN, Haliburton and mega-church driven American landscape.
While the rest of Montreal worked on its David Bowie impression Arcade Fire has been listening to a lot of Bruce Springsteen and NPR, using the Boss’s iconic phrasing and New Jersey by way of Nebraska sense of Americana to build a pretty accurate picture of the boardwalk before setting it ablaze with roller coaster climb-to-freefall songs full of caustic social observations for the All Things Considered set. As an aside, it strikes me that Springsteen is suddenly the primary touchstone for some of the best rock-n-roll being made these days (see The Hold Steady).
The Butler famiy Fire has taken advantage of a well deserved spotlight by leading the way into a raw, shifting, and emotional sound matched, though at times awkwardly, by equally raw and complex content. It’s a move that reminds me of U2 at its egoless best, another appropriate touchstone for their long view on global politics and their guitar-and-drum fueled new wave marches. Arcade Fire may not be the world's biggest band, but for my money they are the most important band working today.
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