The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible (Mar 6)

[Rob]

1. Black Mirror
2. Keep the Car Running
3. Neon Bible
4. Intervention
5. Black Wave/Bad Vibrations
6. Ocean of Noise
7. The Well and the Lighthouse
8. Antichrist Television Blues
9. Windowsill
10. No Cars Go
11. My Body Is a Cage

The album will come in three formats:

1. Regular CD

2. Deluxe CD - The deluxe CD version is packaged in a hinged box with two 32-page flip books designed by the band.

3. Vinyl - LP is double 180-gram audiophile quality with three sides of music and an etching on the fourth side. The LP also includes a coupon for a free MP3 download of Neon Bible.

-------------------------------------------------

Most anticipated album of the year?

Listen to the new single here:

http://www.youaintnopicasso.com/2006/12/15/arcade-fire-intervention/

[foggy]

I'm definitely looking forward to this album - thanks for the link.

[sicottem]

Most anticipated album of the year?


By far...

[blueone]

If it is on par with the debut then I'm a happy bunny.

[Starlite]

We're always so far behind, I'd consider myself lucky if it gets a 2007 release in Australia ;)

[Rob]

You can get a new mislabeled single on iTunes right now.

It was meant to be Intervention, but the second song was uploaded instead.

[Starlite]

http://thetorturegarden.blogspot.com/2007/01/arcade-fire-black-mirror.html

The first single from Neon Bible will be 'Black Mirror', as rumoured. The song is currently available to stream on Win Butler's page on the official site. It is very very good indeed.
After three songs, the progression the Arcade Fire have made from Funeral seems clear - the lyrics here are almost unable (or unwilling) to escape the idea of death, and carry all the dark imagery you would expect. 'Black Mirror' itself sounds a little like how 'Rebellion (Lies)' would sound if the band had died and were playing it in the underworld.
That's not to say they're not having fun with it, rather that the above image, supplied with the song, is a pretty accurate reflection of the lyrics and atmosphere. Win Butler half sings, half whispers, ghostly moans haze around in the background, the drums keep the pace like a pirate ship, the chords sink as though the song itself is becoming submerged in filthy water.
Then there's the Arcade Fire moment - the strings soar, the band picks up, the vocals rise like a sail taken by the wind - and then the chorus takes all that and lifts it up even higher.

"Un, deux, trois, du miroir noir - Black Mirror!"

With this and 'Black Wave/Bad Vibrations' it seems, oddly enough, that the band have taken the logical step after the theme of Funeral. Thankfully, these are still songs that want to live in your head. I don't know if the world can take another two months of this waiting. The apparent release date for the album (in the U.S. anyway) is March 6th.

The Arcade Fire - Black Mirror: http://www.ezarchive.com/show/torturegarden/BlackMirror.mp3 (stream only)

[Rob]

61aaEq1rLxw

Album comes out March 5/6.

[Starlite]

"Hi, I'm Juno Award winning guitarist, Richard Reed Parry".
Such modesty :lol

[Faded Rose]

I can't wait. If the album is as good as promised I'll even forgive the United Europe comment.

[hildegoat]

"Hi, I'm Juno Award winning guitarist, Richard Reed Parry".
Such modesty :lol

It's hard to brag about a Juno, so I think it might be a bit modest. :p

[mattinmass]

inevitably - this will disappoint

[Starlite]

It's hard to brag about a Juno, so I think it might be a bit modest. :p

I remember watching the 2003 Juno Awards - Shania Twain hosted and wore each of the Canadian NHL jerseys done as fancy evening gowns. So yeah, maybe a Juno is not worth bragging about :lol

[hildegoat]

They show the Junos outside of Canada?

[trappss1]

WTF is a juno?

[hildegoat]

It's like a Candian Grammy -- but even more worthless than a normal Grammy, if that's possible. :lol

[Starlite]

They show the Junos outside of Canada?

Nah, I went to McGill for winter semester in 2003.

[hildegoat]

Ahhh, it's all making sense. It just seemed stupid that they'd show internationally an awards show based completely on Canada's inferiority complex. :rolleyes

I'm sure most people outside of the country have not heard most of the artists.

[Faded Rose]

inevitably - this will disappoint

If the Black Mirror track is anything to go by I didn't find it disappointing. I liked it.

[mattinmass]

yes, i enjoy the new tracks so far, i must admit

i just don't see it matching the 1st album - so damn good

[Tim Simmons]

It can't top Funeral. This album could be 11/10 and it won't top Funeral. I have a feeling many will write it off because it isn't funeral.

Which is pretty sad. These 5 tracks are great.

[mattinmass]

5 tracks?

i have intervention
black mirror
body is a cage
ocean of noise

waht am i missing?

[Tim Simmons]

Black Wave/ Bad Vibrations.

It was the track that was for sale as Intervention originally on iTunes.

[Tim Simmons]

And to clear up what i said earlier, I am not looking for Funeral Pt.2. I'm just saying that people will write this album off easier because its not Funeral.

[mattinmass]

that's not what you mean Timmons

and you know it

[mattinmass]

nothing's ever good enough for Tim Simmons :downyours

[sicottem]

http://pitchforkmedia.com/page/forkcast/40613#The_Arcade_Fire_Exclusive_Video_The_Arca

[mattinmass]

holy shit that is cool

[Tim Simmons]

...

[mattinmass]

the album is epic.conphirmed

[Starlite]

Australian release date is 2nd March 2007. :rock

[Faded Rose]

Australian release date is 2nd March 2007. :rock

If you're getting this before the UK you just have to buy it, listen to it and review it - pretty please. I shall get it anyway but it would be nice to know.

[Rob]

Keep the Car Running (SNL)

F6y1p7yzyck

[Rob]

Intervention (SNL)

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[Faded Rose]

Quote from Pete Paphides in The Times:

Neon Bible




Two weeks afterit was posted, the final segment of Arcade Fire’s recent Porchester Hall show has registered more than 50,000 hits on YouTube. By the time the footage begins, Win Butler’s Montreal octet have already left the stage. Then, still wielding their instruments, we see them walking to the lobby, where they perform Wake Up — just one of many songs from 2005’s Funeral album, which alchemised a string of personal bereavements into that year’s most redemptive record. Even on your low-definition web browser you can easily see the uncomfortable body language of bouncers who think that they’re witnessing some Heaven’s Gate -style moment of cult bonding.

And who knows? By the end of Black Mirror , the opening song on Neon Bible , it’s by no means certain that those bouncers don’t have a point. “The black mirror . . . knows not pride or vanity,” sings Butler as a warped migraine thump of skin and ivory keeps the beat. For such extremes of ego-purging sermonising fans of a certain age will no doubt remember Dexys Midnight Runners’ Kevin Rowland — who, in his tortured heyday, was regularly delivering lyrics that explored the same terrain as Butler’s Where Cars Go and My Body is a Cage . “Set my spirit free,” implores the Texas-raised singer on the latter, as an oppressive crescendo echoes around the local church where they recorded it.

Rowland and Butler are united by still more similarities than at first apparent. Just as Rowland did with his band 25 years previously, Butler insisted that for Neon Bible his band learn new instruments to help preserve the innocence of earlier recordings. Hence, celestes and hurdy-gurdys vie with spooky, somnambulant synths on the urgent Black Wave/Bad Vibrations . Here, as on so many songs, it’s Butler’s inability to reconcile the trappings of the modern world with Christian values that feeds the nightmare. Sounding like Bruce Springsteen in a hair shirt, (Antichrist Television Blues) casts Butler as a hard-up parent watching a television talent show and praying that his daughter be spared the travails of his own life by becoming an American Idol.

At times, you wonder if a more emphatically serious album has been made in the past decade. Last week, Butler told NME that the thing that interests him about religion is its reluctance to take a “light-hearted view” of human nature. Clearly a lot has changed since Butler’s teenage spell in a school band called Willy W****r and the Chocolate Factories — and nowhere is that more apparent than on the breathtaking Intervention . A deafening church organ announces itself like the fist of an Old Testament God smashing through the stained glass, and Butler’s fraught examination of crumbling belief rises to its conclusion over a motif that — consciously or otherwise — seems to turn into We Shall Overcome .

Time and time again it’s hard not to feel a modicum of concern for a frontman so set on shedding his earthly container. Once you’ve said all your prayers and sung all your songs, who do you see about a problem like that? If only he could hear what we’re hearing.

I think the upshot is he liked it and I have it on pre-order so here's hoping.

[Sydneyfan]

Review from Bernard Zuel in the SMH this morning. I'm hoping to buy this today. :upyours

The band's extravagantly good debut album, Funeral, drew heavily on its members' emotional and physical response to death. Some partial solace was found in a kind of belief that lives will go on. However, the real optimism was found in the way the music would not die wondering, would not play safe and miss the chance to blow trumpets, to wield mallets at a glockenspiel, to charge headlong in thunderous tumult, if the opportunity arose.

Having begun with death, you might expect then that the Montreal quintet, built around the songwriting of husband and wife Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, would have only one way to go emotionally: up. Ah, no.

Neon Bible is an album made in the shadow of an almost bitter disillusion. Over the tightly bound, martial pace of the opening song, Black Mirror, there are references to the constant vigilance of closed circuit TV, the corruption of public language so that words lose their meaning, unbroken curses and finally, the chant of "Mirror, mirror on the wall/Show me where them bombs will fall".

Across the rest of the album that oppressive weight of insecurity and fear, that postwar lack of trust in governments and institutions, which Butler calls the "curse of the age" of Bush, Howard and Blair, lies across all the songs. Faith is no refuge, either. The anti-clerical Intervention, with lines such as "Singin' hallelujah with the fear in your heart/Every spark of friendship and love/will die without a home", makes that clear. Peace of mind, if it comes at all, comes in that space "between the click of the light and the start of the dream" as Chassagne sings in No Cars Go.

The intensely delivered lyrics accompany less elaborate arrangements than on Funeral, though there are still scads of tuned percussion, choral backing vocals and thick layers of instruments. More intriguingly, and perhaps even amusingly for those Bruce Springsteen fans who have been uncool for 20 years but suddenly see the man's influence in all manner of tres cool bands, there's a lot of that New Jersey native here among the expected melange of Talking Heads, Tim Buckley and the Cure.

And not the anthemic '70s Springsteen either, but the sexually charged, morally ambiguous, rhythmically adventurous late '80s version. Antichrist Television Blues could have come straight from Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love, for one.

It may sound an odd combination and Neon Bible takes some time to reveal its full soul, so you must commit and persevere. But it's a measure of the potential for greatness in Arcade Fire that as the truth dawns on you, you move inexorably from interest to fascination to devotion.

[miss_lilac]

i'm really excited about this!!!

[sicottem]

i got it last week....i personally think that it better than funeral...

[blueone]

Intervention is the highlight, man. That song kicks mofoing ass!

[Faded Rose]

Intervention is the highlight, man. That song kicks mofoing ass!

Intervention is quite brilliant but I also like Black Mirror, Windowsill and The Well and the Lighthouse. It's a bit heavy on the religious (anti-religious) side but it gets better the more you listen. Not quite as good as funeral.

All the reviews I've read of Arcade Fire's current UK tour have been excellent.

[Tim Simmons]

Ocean of Noise is the best track. maybe Windowsill.

[hildegoat]

I purchased it this past Friday, and really enjoy it. I was probably one of the few that wasn't a huge fan of Funeral, so this one is better in my mind. I'm actually a fan of Black Wave/Bad Vibrations and Ocean Of Noise myself.

[blueone]

I've come to the conclusion that it's superior to Funeral, in my opinon. It definitely a grower. :)

[hildegoat]

Calexico's got a live cover of Ocean Of Noise traversing the tubes of the Internet:

http://www.prefixmag.com/blog/calexico-cover-arcade-fires-ocean-of-noise/

[LaCienegaSmile]

Way late to the party on this, but this album is so freaking good! And way better than Funeral. It took a few listens to get into, but I can't stop playing this!