Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Genre rock Publisher Merge Records External Links Official Arcade Fire Website Official Neon Bible Website Official Merge Records Website Arcade Fire - "Black Mirror" MP3

The End is Nigh. Now, more than ever, we're aware of the concept of immediate and meaningless annihilation. Violent attacks around the world, and finally in our own country have exposed even the most rural of Americans to the mindset, the not-so-fantastic possibility that your life, regardless of societal of personal importance, could end before, say, your chimichanga has a chance to explode in your Nuker-wave. And many people have digested that and forged on. We've become acclimated to this sort of lifestyle, whether we're ignorant of or at peace with our tenuous hold on life. So, yeah, we're able to continue to solve problems as we have before, with the progress of rational thought coupled with human compassion.

But for a good deal of people, these attacks have continued to act as a rallying call from above. They cleared the way for religious fervor to spread like wildfire across our country like few times before. We're truly a nation under God, and he's giving it to us hard and fast (with no lube) in the form of Blowhard Religious-Right Zealots. Every day, humanism and logic are pushed further to the margins by a blind, mindless mob, baying for abortion abolition, the halt of scientific study, hateful condemnation of lifestyle freedom, all the while labeling their agenda as one of Loving Morality. And so the rest of us are being pushed from both sides into Hell. Violent, quick-strike attacks on one side. Slow, suffocating dogma from the other. These are dangerous times and pressure is high. We can't afford to be blase and "Meh" about this shit anymore. It's time to have some passion and fire of our own. These are the themes and feelings that rush through the veins of the Arcade Fire's brilliant album Neon Bible.

This is a wholly complete album with a strong overall ambiance of forthcoming doom. It's frightening, and it's played with such fervent intensity, with such an absolute sense of fearful purpose, that you'll often feel like the musicians are battling some sort of monumental demon, even as they're running away from it, scared shitess. And it's easy to see why. The first sounds of the album are rumbling tremors of heavy bombs on "Black Mirror". "After waking from a nightmare," lead singer Win Butler walks to the ocean and sees something even more nightmarish. A black void, pitiless, and indifferent that predicts that "a time is coming [when] All words will lose their meaning." Kettle drums land heavy echoes over clarinet swirls of wind. The song builds into an orchestral hurricane while Butler pleads, "Mirror, mirror, on the wall / Show me where them bombs will fall." Of course, that mirror isn't telling him jack, and the song fades out with more haunting missile rainfall. "Keep the Car Running" depicts the frenzied first reaction to this horror. There's gotta be a mode of escape because we "don't know where and [we] don't know when it's coming." It has a running pace; trying to get away from an unmentionable fear they've known "before [they] could speak." Contrary to what Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell would have you believe, "you can't climb across a mountain so high." And "you can't swim across a river so deep." Arcade Fire hint at an escape that's so urgent that even loved ones must be left behind. This rapture is mentioned later in the album with "Where No Cars Go." Apparently we need to keep the car running to escape, but in the end, we arrive in heaven, nothingness (or whichever afterlife you prefer) where cars can't go, along with the world's planes, ships, subs, and spaceships.

A string ensemble quietly ushers in "Neon Bible." With a simple, slow drum beat and the hushed sing-song calls of "Nee-on Bii-ble," it seems a safe haven from the madness thrown about in the first two songs. But don't think you can relax for a second. Butler's voice is strained here, telling us that "there's not much chance for survival / If the Neon Bible is right." The softly spoken nature of his words creates an atmosphere that's even more frightening than the bombs and the chaos. And here's where the band's discussion of religious ambiguity begins. "A vial of hope and a vial of pain / In the light they both look the same." Throughout the entirety of the album, the Arcade Fire presents conflicting messages towards the validity and personal benefits of modern organized religion. How do they feel absolutely? I can't tell. With such cryptic imagery and such rapidly oscillating condemnation and approval, it seems that the only true answer or discernable path that can be extracted from such a cacophonous maelstrom is that there is none.

"Intervention" initially sounds like Big Church's response, which blasts with an organ swell so rich and powerful that it makes one want to spend a Sunday morning or two in a holy house. There are several songs on this album that could qualify as the pinnacle, the thematic focal point of the whole, and this aching, sobbing church hymnal is one of them. Eventually, it becomes clear that this song is more about the pain of religious disillusionment than anything else. "Singin' Hallelujah with the Fear in your heart!" cries Butler, whose voice, along with a superb backing choir, propels this album to perfection. Every word he's put on this album is packed with a fervent tension. It's as if its IMPERATIVE that you hear his words and the emotional force behind them Right This Instant, because there just isn't that much time left. At this point, even Christian soldiers are giving up in despair, deciding to "go at it alone."

Another fantastic example of the religious ambiguity occurs in my favorite song of the album, "(Antichrist Television Blues)". I've heard in other avenues that this song was originally titled "Joe Simpson," in acknowledgement of the manipulative father/manager of sisters Jessica and Ashley. So, right off the bat, we're not going to have a whole lot of empathy for this song's character. However, he's living scared, "work[ing] in a building downtown," terrified "'cause the planes keep crashin' / always two by two." His ticket out of Horror-Town is his little daughter, singing beautifully, perhaps well enough to "be a star...on the TV screen." He claims he wants her to be the mouthpiece of the heavens, but it's very clear that he has designs on her ownership, explaining that "she can sing like a bird in a cage," while threatening that if she doesn't use her gift NOW, "then daddy won't buy her no diamond ring." While we can immediately have difficulty associating ourselves with a person who uses his daughter for his own convoluted means, there is some sense of understanding of the fear and strife this man goes through when seeing the terror of the world up so close. Butler charges fast with this song, it builds with maddening word speed and anxiety until, realizing himself "Joe" cries in a thundering conclusion, "O, Tell me Lord, am I the antiCHRIST?!" All the air is sucked out of the room, dead stop. Then, 8 seconds of amazing, empty silence. Like every other tough question in this album, there's no real response. Just a shaken after-effect shudder.

"My body is a cage / That keeps me / From dancing with the one that I love / But my mind holds the key." In the end, the individual confidence and faith in one's own person is what gives strength and freedom. The concluding song ploddingly trains its weary eyes on the ignorant and fearful aspects our world, how alone we are until we overcome ourselves, and bridge that gap. There simply doesn't need to be a structure or system in place to do it for us. When I begged for my editor to let me review this album, he mentioned that while he did like the Arcade Fire, "their fans seem to be a bit overly zealous, to put it mildly." The guy's a goddamn sage. Without hearing a second of this album, he had struck the main chord of what the band is trying to tell us, and how positively the people who listen are reacting. This band has shown monumental effort, expertise, and profundity in dealing their dogmatist, religious subject matter. It's no surprise the fast-growing numbers of fans are responding with some zealotry of their own. We've been given something epic, something great.