NeighborPolled: Arcade Fire - FUNERAL poll

This Poll Was a Good Idea (Lies)

This Poll Was a Good Idea (7 Kettles)

The most important indie rock debut from this decade

In 2004, ten songs and several Canadians shook the world.

No one had ever sounded quite like this

Nothing would ever be the same again

FUNERAL

an Arcade Fire record

in theaters this summer

ooh controversial

thread title could be better but this is a good album

RePOLLion (Lies)

Starting an album - a first album at that - with the word "and". Rad.

http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00179/images/LaikaRussianDogRSA.jpg

never understood the backlash against this album. black mirror though i thought was boring and horribly produced. it's a toss up between "rebellion" and "une année sans lumiere", but it's all ood affecting grandiose stuff. Haven't heard it in ages now though.

xp just read the wiki entry on Laika :(

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Laika.jpg

cute

...i mean i always knew who laika was, just never really bothered looking into the particulars

Yeah that Laika article is great. "I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live."

Voted for Wake Up.

Been years since I heard this. Loved it. Will have to revisit but I think Power Out was my fave.

"Rebellion (Lies)."

http://i30.tinypic.com/2lw57hj.jpg

no more laika pixx

never understood the backlash against this album.

OTM -- hype aside, I've always heard this album as the 2000s heir to the Bunnymen's Ocean Rain. Voted for "Wake Up" but could've also gone with "Tunnels," "Laika," "Power Out" or "Rebellion" and been satisfied.

I think the reason the album works so well is that it manages to graft the sort of widescreen emotional heft possible in postrock onto, y'know "proper tunes". Also, having a bunch of instruments playing those singsong melodies as opposed to a guitar picking out bits in the background. Also also, the lyrics are generally vague enough for the the listener to project all kinds of stuff onto them.

On the other hand, my French friends all think that the bits in French are pretty embarrassing.

I think the reason the album works so well is that it manages to graft the sort of widescreen emotional heft possible in postrock onto, y'know "proper tunes". Also, having a bunch of instruments playing those singsong melodies as opposed to a guitar picking out bits in the background. Also also, the lyrics are generally vague enough for the the listener to project all kinds of stuff onto them.

All this could be said about Ocean Rain as well... hence, the similarity?

All this could be said about Ocean Rain as well... hence, the similarity?

I'm only familiar with the singles from Ocean Rain, will have to, um, acquire a copy. I have a sound engineer friend who's witnessed Ian McCulloch's ongoing attempts to record a new solo album, something like "Chinese Democracy but with way more drugs" was mentioned, a whole week to record a single chord, that sort of thing.

this album is better than the da vinci code

This thread inspired me to give this record another spin after having shelved it for years - it's still pretty much impossible to be objective about it now, esp. as a Montrealer, because it was such an omnipresent record for so long. I remember going to a Constantines/Jim Guthrie show at Main Hall just after it came out, and the entirety of it was played between sets, even starting it over when it was finished. The first time through, damn near everyone was singing along to the bits you'd expect. Then the second play came...

After a while, the melodramatic aspect of their sound, which came to be known as a Montreal thing (aided by the Constellation folk, for sure), got to be really tiresome, and before long, everyone I knew was sick of hearing their name (and "Wake Up" at hockey games). I mean, if you're going to do the epic orchestral shit, it's hard to do it better than they did on this record, but fatigue w/r/t/ that aesthetic set in pretty quickly, particularly because it became synonymous w/ the city. I probably never gave the second record a fair shake as a result.

Now, I tend to gravitate towards the less anthemic tracks like "7 Kettles" and "Haiti."

this album has one good song on it and you all know what it is

They should let what's-her-name sing more.

xpost It's the first one, right?

i think the song that really stuck with me is "Haiti" ... i don't really like the main dude's voice

This thread inspired me to give this record another spin after having shelved it for years - it's still pretty much impossible to be objective about it now, esp. as a Montrealer, because it was such an omnipresent record for so long.

Now, I tend to gravitate towards the less anthemic tracks

I think you've nailed exactly how the average music-loving Dub feels about U2.

(Not a Dub but starting to feel like one after ten years here. Besides, what anthemic mega-acts are there for us Waterford folk to feel conflicted about? Val Doonican? Gilbert O'Sullivan? Brendan Boyer and the Royal Showband? The original Nirvana?)

Rebellion(Lies) sticks out for me. and i still don't understand why Funeral gets SO much more love than NB. is it some kind of hipster backlash/i liked their first one better kind of thinking?
i don't play it a lot, but that's partially 'cause it's kind of "heavy" and a mood thing.

i still don't understand why Funeral gets SO much more love than NB

I have this notion that, for the first album, they just sat down and wrote songs, whereas for the second album, they listened too much about what had been said about them and set out to write Arcade Fire Songs(tm). I think this is why the missteps on the second album annoy me much more than the missteps on the first. Smashing the guitar on TV seemed to be a sign that gesture was replacing feeling.

Also, recording an album in a church is a grand idea conceptually but a lousy idea sonically. You can't pull up close and dry and intimate, everything has to be huge and muddy, all the time.

I have a sound engineer friend who's witnessed Ian McCulloch's ongoing attempts to record a new solo album, something like "Chinese Democracy but with way more drugs" was mentioned, a whole week to record a single chord, that sort of thing. - o man, this sounds fantastic!

The fact that the best song on Neon Bible is a re-recording of a track from an old EP speaks volumes i think

hmm. ocean rain may be melodramatic, but at the time it was viewed as a slicked down sellout by almost all the bunnymen fans i knew. i was one of the very few bunnymen fans i knew that actually liked ocean rain. i remember trying to argue for it and one friend saying "don't even let's do this, i'm not gonna waste breath on that record." maybe im alone here, but funeral sounds far more direct and raw. to me its more like arena nmh than bunnymen.

I don't hear many aural similarities between the two albums other than that their makes had big lips and questionable taste in literature -- and Funeral's still the superior album.

*makers

I don't know what the consensus choice on this album is. I really love "Rebellion (Lies)"; great Hooky bass, and one of the few sexy songs in their oeuvre thus far.

it's still pretty much impossible to be objective about it now, esp as a Montrealer, because it was such an omnipresent record for so long ... I mean, if you're going to do the epic orchestral shit, it's hard to do it better than they did on this record, but fatigue w/r/t/ that aesthetic set in pretty quickly, particularly because it became synonymous w/ the city. I probably never gave the second record a fair shake as a result.

oh man it was awesome listening to this album in montreal at the height of its popularity. the singles were being played on CHOM, my father liked the album, my boss at the time would play it at work; all to joyous universal approval. i agree it got dragged on a bit long, and the fact that no one cared about the second album at all was a bummer (although it is boring), but that was pretty much the only time i've ever been privy to an album that everyone really cared about alot all at the same time.

probably laika, because the other track i used to really like here (rebellion) has an irritating preachy feel when i listen to it these days.

In the UK (where I live anyway), Arcade Fire were largely ignored outside of specific indie circles until Neon Bible came out.

thread title could be better but this is a good album

agreed, i should never try and get clever with my titles. they will, for now on, just be basic and boring.

so i listened to this on my way home from work, still sounds great. i knew i was going to vote for "Wake Up" but "Rebellion (Lies)" and "Crown of Love" almost got this vote.

>Also, recording an album in a church is a grand idea conceptually but a lousy idea sonically. You can't pull up close and dry and intimate, everything has to be huge and muddy, all the time.

That must be why Spirit of Eden is such a crappy sounding album!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Also, recording an album in a church is a grand idea conceptually but a lousy idea sonically. You can't pull up close and dry and intimate, everything has to be huge and muddy, all the time.

Another contrary view: Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Session, which was neither.

I also relistened to Neon Bible which is half great ("Ocean of Noise," "Keep the Car Running," "Black Waves/Bad Vibrations," "Well and the Lighthouse") but some songs don't really go anywhere and the ORGAN OF DOOM that crops up here and there is mega-obnoxious.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I also relistened to Neon Bible which is half great

Am I the only one who prefers Neon Bible and thinks it's the better album?

Correct winner.

I went out into the night I went out to pick a fight with anyone

No matter what their later sins were, I still quite like this album and Rebellion (Lies) will always be great

i will always love this album so much :')

the climax of "crown of love" recently popped into my head and it was v nice

when my gf and i were living in a lil 2 1/2 apt with a bedroom/living room separated by a bookshelf, a friend slept over on our couch, and my gf had 'Haiti' as her alarm, and we had this really bad habit of snoozing for hours. my friend later told me he was just lying awake on our couch for over 2 hours as the first 15 seconds of the song would play over and over, every ten minutes

but yeah, this album is just lightning in a bottle

I know for a fact I had an early copy of this album but pretty sure I didn't listen to it, seeing as it landed on my desk during an anti-indie rock phase. Something brought me back to it soon enough, but a key imo was watching this 2005 Jools Holland clip, which I downloaded (took forever) maybe just after the advent of youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J96HC8RtZPs

Why did I download it? No idea. I don't think I was reading Pitchfork, but must have known of the brouhaha.

I'm glad this album is old enough now that it can be appreciated on its own and not seen as an emblem of some divisive slew of cultural signifiers once labeled "indie."

This album is great and I have nothing but the deepest hatred for everyone who thought they were too cool for it.

:(

It’s a new(ish) year and I have a new attitude.

their best album, which is to say it's not terrible. the followup is also not terrible.

I dont have much to say about their other albums. But Rebellion (Lies) is magnificent.

They never quite felt as intimate as on this record and it's a huge part of why I don't care about them as much anymore. Backseat is the one song that contains everything I love about Arcade Fire as an idea and I wish they could revisit that.

I've got no time for this band either except Rebellion, Crown of Love, Une Annee Sans Lumiere and The Sprawl II. All those songs are great

yeah still a good album. don' tknow why they got so uninteresting to me after this.

“Afterlife” from their second to last album is a pretty amazing song too. But their first album is still far and away their best.

i saw them on tour for this in a smallish club (compared to the fucking arenas they apparently play now) and it was great, good enough that I never wanted to see them again

For me the grandiose ambition of their records was appealing and compelling when they were nobodies, but felt bombastic and entitled when they were huge.

extremely difficult to overstate just how good and overwhelming this album is

Haïti is my favourite song on this album, and The Suburbs is a better album imho

I still quite enjoy Funeral, as I learned this morning after my first play since, well, the Obama years. Neon Bible too. Dat's dat, though.

my first play since, well, the Obama years

That kind of defined the band for me in retrospect. Even though those first two albums pre-dated Obama's presidency, they were released after Obama was already catapulted into political stardom thanks to his convention speech, and in a way both of them kind of rose to greater prominence for embodying some kind of utopian optimism. I wasn't fully onboard with either, but I was rooting for them to grow beyond my expectations, and with Arcade Fire, they briefly won me over only to fade and eventually collapse altogether in shameful fashion.

Anyway, posting here because in recent weeks, people I know who are much more attached to Broadway musicals have been raving about Stereophonic. (I was completely unaware of its original off-Broadway run.) I just saw Paul Schrader and film critic David Edelstein rave about it as well. I looked it up and was surprised to see that Will Butler had composed the music. I really had the blinders on, but it looks like this has launched a whole new thing for him outside of Arcade Fire. It's strange how the two musicals that have made the most waves on my social media feed in the past two months have been associated with two artists that benefitted greatly from being Pitchfork darlings in the mid-'00s. (The other is the new musical based on Sufjan Stevens's Illinois, which is supposed to be great.)