Arcade Fire by Mick Middles

Author:Mick Middles [MIDDLES, MICK]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-773-0
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2012-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Neon Bible

By the spring of 2007, Arcade Fire’s genre-defying style dominated everything that was written about them. The depth, power, scope and feel of Funeral had opened ears and minds. Acclaimed by just about everybody, it had become one of the true classic albums of the decade, if not of all time. It was only the unique nature of the music, and its propensity for troubling dyed-in-the-wool minds, that prevented if from becoming a ‘landmark rock album’. Quite what kind of album it was caused ripples of consternation in an era when albums were marketed simply by genre, thereby quickly reaching their natural place in the market, be it in the CD racks of dwindling record stores or downloaded onto iPhones via iTunes which automatically decrees in which genre of music an album should be catagorised. While in artistic terms a music form that is unidentifiable can only be seen as refreshing and vital, it is the kind of dilemma that brings a puzzling awkwardness to the marketing selection process.

“It is something we are aware of but could never allow to affect us in any way,” Will Butler told Australian magazine Scream in 2006. “Not one person in this band is built that way. Songs are written and then they evolve and include the entire band, each member adding to the song. It doesn’t always work out. Sometimes there are disagreements but that is not the norm. We have come to a place where each musician feels their way into a song.”

The writing of songs by Arcade Fire was an organic process, allowing the basic idea of each song to gather instrumentation along the way. While this allows Arcade Fire the freedom to drift beyond the initial stirrings, it also makes it difficult to establish a clear cut direction. Or is that, too, a perfectly natural process? Régine: “I think we have only a vague idea at the beginning. We write songs all the time and it is not always natural for them to fall in with some general concept that may or may not be the next album.”

Nevertheless, a collection of disparate songs does not make a cohesive album. There has to be some thread running through them, even if it’s ambiguous. This was especially true in the wake of the immense success of Funeral, which was virtually a ‘concept’ album, albeit one born from the most unlikely of sources. That was problem number one when it came to recording the follow-up – how to find something equally identifiable and something that stayed true to the band’s natural songwriting process. The problem was exasperated by the continuous touring that occurred as a direct result of Funeral’s success. Writing on the road rarely met with success.

Régine: “We do write on the road, though. What is not particularly natural for us, is the social expectations of being on tour. Meeting people backstage, whether they are fans or record company people, is not something that any of us are any good at.

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