Arcade Fire – ‘Neon Bible’ (Sonovox) Released 05/03/07

Think for a moment of the modern world. A place riddled in hostile confrontation because of the quest for personal, political and corporate global dominance. A place suffocating in people’s ignorant spiritual strife and a place where if you can sing two lines of a Robbie Williams song you’re touted as ‘the next big thing’. For too long now there has been no new directive, no new set of commandments to live by and nothing to just simply believe in. Until now that is. At last a new scripture has been written, and it’s something our new saviours Arcade Fire subconsciously and unwittingly implore us to have faith in.

After bursting our ear drums – not to mention the music industries then, seemingly unbreakable commercial dominance – in 2005 with the morose yet epic sounding, ‘Funeral’ Arcade Fire could have wilted under the pressure of expectancy with their second album and left only ‘Funeral’ as their lasting legacy. Thankfully however, with ‘Neon Bible’ that hasn’t happened.

Crafted in Montreal’s Eglise St Jean Baptiste in their Canadian homeland, it’s an album of; you guessed it, biblical proportions. Ablaze with ecclesiastical pipe organs, harps, pianos, guitars, drums and every other obscure instrument you’d expect only Arcade Fire to be able to incorporate into a song, ‘Neon Bible’ is Arcade Fire anthemically coming to terms with the world that they reluctantly have to live in - from the MTV generation (‘Windowsill’) to the devastation of natural disasters (‘Black Wave’) – before offering a thin slice of salvation from it all (“We know a place where no planes go / We know a place where no ships go”).  

It’s all a bit ominous from the brooding, stirring opening of ‘Black Mirror’ which sees Win Butler anticipating the black mist fast approaching in the distance. “Mirror, Mirror on the wall show me where them bombs will fall,” he sings, while the rest of the band back him with an orchestral concoction befitting of the impending impact. Whereas ‘Funeral’ saw the band musically mourning the deaths of close relatives, now they’re dealing with something rather more accessible to the rest of us – the state of the world. The electro ‘Black Wave’ continues the dark outlook with Win and his wife Régine exchanging vocal vows whilst seemingly touching on the devastation of the Asian Tsunami. “There’s a great black wave in the middle of the sea.”