The Trail

Issue date: 3/2/07 Section: A&E

March brings the release of highly anticipated albums from the bands, The Arcade Fire and Air, and while The Arcade Fire's new album strikes gold by building on past strengths to bring their sound into new territory, Air's new album gets mired in mediocrity.

Just as I was about to review these albums, my laptop broke, leaving me without a CD player except for the one in my car. As such, I had to take to my car and listen to each of the albums on the open road (or rather, since gas is an amenity I cannot afford, creepily parked at Point Defiance). This way of listening to the new releases actually brought out the highlights and lowlights of each, without drawing excessive police attention to me.

To listen to The Arcade Fire's "Neon Bible," I ventured into Ruston and parked on a street lined with decrepit houses and spindly, lonely trees - an environment well suited to the music on the album.

Musically, The Arcade Fire plays to its strengths on "Neon Bible," peppering the album with desperate, cathartic anthems reminiscent of Heroes-era Bowie as well as moodier ballads that conjure The Cure. The most effective moments on the album are when Win Butler's voice toes the line between melody and hysteria, attaining a level of emotional purity and catharsis rarely heard in pop music.

The Arcade Fire also uses the number of its personnel to its advantage on the album, building "No Cars Go" to a frenetic crescendo reminiscent of Godspeed You Black Emperor.
Vestiges of Bruce Springsteen have always lurked under the surface of many of The Arcade Fire's songs, but his influence is blatant in a couple of the tracks on "Neon Bible," especially "Antichrist Television Blues," which could pass for a (very good) Springsteen tune.

The instrumentation on the album is more diverse than its predecessor, "Funeral," featuring pump organ, mandolin and a full choir, but the kitchen sink approach to production augments the band's ability to makes skin-crawlingly liberating anthems.

Lyrically, "Neon Bible" is more scattershot, and breaks significantly from their previous album. On "Funeral," songs revolved around the desperate, grab-life-by-the-sac romanticism of youth and young love hampered by the constraints of rational society.

"Neon Bible" shifts the focus to society and social commentary, and it turns out that The Arcade Fire are more astute lyricists when dealing with interpersonal relationships than with societal problems.

Continued...

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