A Follow-Up Worlds Ahead of Their Overrated Debut

Allow me to address this formality before we begin: I was wrong about The Arcade Fire. In fact, I’ve been wrong for nearly three years.

For clarification’s sake, it’s not the pride-toppling portion of the pill that embitters me – I can’t begin to fathom the countless amounts of miscues and outright bad calls I’ve perpetrated with my personal assessment of a handful of these…reasonably gifted scene bands. I immediately wrote off the band entirely on the basis of their debut, Funeral, whose universal acclaim left me wholly perplexed – possibly to where it factored into my overall uninspired impression. No, the frustrating curveball that occurs here is that, based on the sophomore blueprint of Neon Bible, there theoretically should be even less for me to be fascinated with on this entry. In fact, the group initially find themselves batting in the same ballpark as Bloc Party and The Killers; both of whose many failings include ill-advised gambles with Coldplay-sized butane lighter stadium anthems, as well as finding themselves thrashing pitilessly in a quagmire of their own poorly-executed attempts for weightier lyrical gravitas.

The comparisons might appear oblique at the outset, but there’s a worrisome level of ease in zeroing in on one aspect that contributed to the auto-fail of A Weekend in the City and Sam’s Town: overproduction. The Arcade Fire shows little in the way of resilience to that tendency here, demonstrating an uncompromising adherence to a sonically expansive bombast that borderlines epic conceit. The record’s most easily identifiable offender is the indulgent but negligible “My Body is a Cage”, as it rounds out the album by attempting to recreate the dizzying plateaus achieved earlier in the record through dense stratums of ubiquitous pipe organ simmer and hazy gospel choir howls. This slow-burn imminently and predictably gives way to a rupture of volcanic organ chords, menacing electric guitars and snarling bass hell-bent on drowning out desperate squeals of asphyxiated French horn bursts that intermittently bubble their way to the surface. What congeals towards the track's end is a wall of unrelenting gothic pomposity whose independent elements ravenously compete for spatial occupation, resulting in something that can only be best illustrated as aural hemorrhaging.

Where this closer falters is that it’s little more than a pale facsimile of “Intervention”, opting for the same feverish, spirited abandon of the original. Simply put, the arrangement is not as graceful, captivating or rhythmically propulsive, and Win Butler’s compulsory acknowledgement of the group’s post-celebrity cynicism (“I’m standing on a stage / Of fear and self-doubt / It’s a hollow play / But they’ll clap anyway”) draws undesirable attention to the clumsy nature of the rest of the song’s circular lyricism. This goes a long way in showing that, contrary to popular belief, inflated sounds are not always precursors to soul-searing acumen, although many bands will do their damnedest and deploy all sorts of studio tomfoolery to convince you otherwise.

So – even though this Montreal septet exploits a number of crucial missteps that have vexed many a follow-up record of numerous up-and-comers, why does it actually work? To their good fortune, it’s really only the finale suffers the brunt of the perilous double strike of a pointlessly overblown track lacking any kind of lyrical thrust. This is also not to mention a glaring hindrance that lead singer Win Butler has not managed to rise above, that trademark inclination for emotional embellishment. And while the remainder of the set is, indeed, an undertaking into chorale-like splendor; the difference between The Arcade Fire and their predecessors is that this brand of fist-raising exuberance is very much a natural extension of Funeral’s ultimately life-affirming ardor (as evidenced by the adrenaline-heightening verve of “Neighborhood #1 [Tunnels]” or “Crown of Love”). Within this context, the transitional arc from their debut to the grandiose affectations of the band’s latest makes intuitive sense.

More significantly, accompanying the band’s broadened breadth is the implementation of a tenacious sonic uniformity bereft on the largely emulative catalogue of Funeral. The band’s unlikely gravitation toward '80s underpinnings, albeit present in ulterior form throughout the record, makes its most palpable strides down the marble and velvet church aisle in the double-sided suite “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations”. It’s a heavy-handed reverb behemoth featuring band co-leader Regine Chassagne’s piercing mezzo-soprano tones briskly traipsing in alternating English and French against otherworldly synthesizer stabs – until the tempo ratchets back slightly to make room for ill-omened guitars and drums to escort Butler’s wiry, doom-mongering bellow into the song’s ominous second half.

“Ocean of Noise” is the consummate centerpiece of the record, exhibiting The Arcade Fire’s most calibrated discipline with harnessing the expanse of their impassioned zeal. In contrast of the uneventful title track, this is the only song on the album where the group truly achieves sonic equilibrium: a point where the group manages an earnest diversification of tempo without forgoing the proclivities of their newfound scope. Bassist Tim Kingsbury knuckles down into a grooving bossa nova bassline that languorously cascades down a rivulet as conjoining streams gradually bring insistent piano chords, reverbed guitar, and brushstroked percussion into the mix. Butler’s vocal restraint aids the propulsion as they ebb and flow with the song’s fluctuating intensities right before the flow reaches critical catharsis. What incurs in the place of a potential miasma of white noise is a thrillingly tempered release of surges of sound – righteously melodious keystrokes, robust drums, trilling guitars, and Butler’s own liberated but non-sensationalized croon – as they rush into the delta to spread out their flourishes amongst the reception of majestic mariachi brass and blissful backup vocal harmonies.

The song is a point of culmination that’s also notable for its shrewdly backseated thematic foresight, for it subtly threads together the record’s numerous and pervasive allusions to masses of water and the characteristics thereof. There are several instances around the set where Butler uses this imagery as a vehicle for his latest affinity for secular commentary. Furthermore, these lyrical annotations of global affairs cast this record in a light that most effectively distances Neon Bible from Funeral: it’s no longer recurring song arrangements or an omnipresent anecdotal nexus that make up the foundation of this concept record, but rather the band’s cohesive sound and determined, if not at times clunky, worldly focus. It’s a decidedly different (and more compelling) shade and pace from “Neon Bible” precisely because of its calculated yet somehow organic design.

Whether or not Neon Bible’s 80s-afflicted composure ever manages the euphoric altitudes of its antecessor is up for debate, but it’s irrefutable that the group’s debut – in no way – ought to be branded a beacon of ingenuity. In fact, the Bruce Springsteen-styled blue collar shanty of “(Antichrist Television Blues)” notwithstanding, this record makes firmer bids and more concerted strokes for originality than their debut ever did – and should in the very least double as auxiliary proof of the gross over-approximation of Funeral’s canonization. I left the group no benefit of the doubt for future improvement over imitative material masquerading as innovative excellence, and really, their artfully misleading debut should have been the maximum extent of my censure; the very existence of Neon Bible is the vital testimonial to that.

Additionally, there will always be, to a permissive extent, an understandable degree of suspicion that accompanies any independent band’s use of instrumentation not typical of rock music, but this particular group ought to be separated from the cluster of peers who have been unsuccessful in confirming merit in these unusual instruments past novelty status. Chassagne’s orchestral arrangements (coupled with premium refinement by Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett) of harps, accordions, mandolins and string sections primarily serve to adorn rather than distract, and they cross great distances to underscore The Arcade Fire’s perseverance in thrusting forward with unbridled rhapsody in the face of heartbreak, petulance and misfortune – undeniably their greatest asset of all.

My preliminary write-off of the band is the best mistake I’ve ever made. This is a newly emboldened and more individualistic incarnation of The Arcade Fire making their dexterous lunge out of their derivative, ham-fisted embryonic stage, and frankly, we’re all the better for it. I await the true masterpiece of their third installment with bated breath.