Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible

Until the release of their new CD, Neon Bible, I was never a huge Arcade Fire fan. When my iTunes was set to ‘Shuffle’, and one of its songs came on, I didn’t skip over it, but I never used to make the conscious decision to listen to it. The only reason I even obtained a copy of Neon Bible is that my roommate has always been a much bigger fan than I am, and she bugged me for weeks to give Neon Bible a try.

I was hooked by the time the second track was over. My iPod has been constantly looping Neon Bible for the past week, and I’m still finding new things to love. According to the band’s Myspace site, Neon Bible boasts the use of a pipe organ, a Hurdy Gurdy, a military choir, and a Hungarian orchestra.

The eclectic nature of the composition of the tracks reflects the eclectic nature of the composition of the band itself. Arcade Fire is comprised of seven members who came together over a period of time from various backgrounds, and somehow managed to congeal themselves into a band with one comprehensive sound. (Click here for a link to a very artfully written biography of the band by Alex Neal–definitely more entertaining than any bio I would try to recreate.)

I spent some time reading reviews written by other people for this post. The general consensus seems to that Neon Bible doesn’t quite live up to the high standards set by Funeral (their first album) or even The Arcade Fire EP. (Click here for the Rolling Stone review–it does a good job of summing up the majority of the complaints lodged against Neon Bible.) I’ll even admit that the critics raise a few good points. After reading over and over again that the reverb was excessive, I’ve started to notice that some of the lyrics and melodies would be a lot cleaner without it. But even though I have to (grudgingly) admit that Neon Bible is not the perfect album, I can’t say that that admission really affects my love for it.

My roommate (the die-hard Arcade Fire fan I mentioned before) said this about the new album: “It’s kind of gloomy and overdone, I guess, but who cares, if it’s the kind of CD that makes people want to listen to it over and over again?” As far as Neon Bible is concerned, I’m in complete agreement with her. There are a lot of albums that may be catchy or fun to listen to, but their flaws outweigh their benefits. No so for Neon Bible. There are definitely problems with the album, but the end result is a beautiful, gothic album that I can’t force myself to stop listening to.

The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife

My first post in this blog was a long rant about all the bad albums that came out last year. While I stand by the claim that 2006 was a bad year for music, there were a few exceptions. I was planning on writing about Forgive Durden tonight, but I was walking home from work a few minutes ago with my iPod on suffle, and a song from the most recent Decemberists’ CD came on. It reminded me how much I love their new CD, and I decided to save Forgive Durden for another time, and talk about The Crane Wife.

The Decemberists (click here to view their website) are no longer the relatively-obscure band that they were when they released their first three CDs. (They’ve become so mainstream that some of their songs are even played in Starbucks.) Their first three CDS (Castaways and Cutouts, Her Majesty the Decemberists, and Picaresque) were released on the small, independent label Kill Rock Stars, but The Crane Wife was released on Capitol Records, making it their first major-label album. But for those who still don’t know who the Decemberists are, I can’t think of a more fitting description than Stephen Colbert’s, who called the band an example of “hyper-literate prog rock.”

The two things I appreciate most about the Decemberists are their amazing vocabulay (notable on The Crane Wife is the inclusion of the word ‘dirigible’) and the subject matter of their songs. In this second category, The Crane Wife may not have quite lived up to the other albums, but the songs did contain some interesting plot lines. The Crane Wife, more than their other albums, has certain overriding themes that reappear. The title comes from multiple tracks based around the old Japanese folktale about a man who falls in love with a crane who has changed into a woman. The theme of war is also more prevelent on this CD than on previous ones.

Although there are certain aspects of this album that are not quite perfect (some of the plot lines of the songs are a bit stale- like “O Valencia!”, which basically retells West Side Story) it nevertheless is an amazing addition to the esteemed repitoire of the Decemberists. It compliments their other offerings well. There is even a song included on The Crane Wife (“The Perfect Crime”) that finishes the story started in “Bagman’s Gambit”. In a year of disappointing music, I am happy to report that I can still count on the Decemberists to release an amazing and very satisfying album.

Billy Talent at El Corazon, 4/3/07

When I first heard Billy Talent’s latest offering, Billy Talent II, I was not impressed. The first CD the band released under the name Billy Talent is still one of my all-time favorite albums, but I found Billy Talent II to be a disappointing follow-up. The songs were undeniably catchy, but the lyrics alternated between being cliche and not making any sense. One of the most obvious differences between the two albums was the significantly greater number of songs about girls and love on Billy Talent II. Billy Talent I is full of tracks written about uncommon subjects (how lies can overtake a life, the laments of an aging prostitute, the willingness to sacrifice everything for an immortal reputation). Billy Talent II, on the other hand, includes too many love songs. The songs that aren’t about love try too hard to be clever, either coming off as too obvious or too senseless.

But even though I was disappointed in its new album, I still went to the Billy Talent show at El Corazon on 4/3 (click here to see upcoming Billy Talent shows, and here to see upcoming shows at El Corazon). And even though the show was packed with songs from the new album, Billy Talent’s stage presence made up for any shortcomings in the music itself.

Billy Talent is a Canadian band, which, according to the lead singer of Cancer Bats, one of the openers, is “fucking huge in Canada.” He proceeded to remind us how lucky we were that we were seeing it at such a small and intimate venue. Tickets for this show were only $12, but the price of tickets for Billy Talent’s shows in Canada cost over $40. After seeing the show, I would have gladly payed $40 or more.

The band had inexhaustible energy, which was most apparent in lead singer Benjamin Kowalewicz. Ben wasn’t stationary for a second of the show, even though the band played a long set and an encore. Plus, in between songs, Ben achieved the perfect balance of joking with the audience and telling personal anecdotes and just introducing the next song. Most impressively, he stopped a song right in the middle when he saw a girl fall down in the mosh pit, and refused to resume singing until he had ensured that she was okay.

So even though I was originally unimpressed with the latest offering from Billy Talent, I find myself listening to Billy Talent II more now that I have seen it performed live. The personality of the band, and of Ben Kowalewicz especially, endeared my to Billy Talent even more than I already had been.

2006’s Disappointing Offerings

In the last year of so, I’ve noticed a disappointing trend: that nearly every new album released by a band that I had previously adored, failed to meet even half of the expectations that I’d set for it.  Of course, there were a few exceptions to this rule, but for the most part, bands seemed to be floundering where once they had flourished.  I want to devote this blog to my own personal reviews of new albums of old favorites and new talents.

Since this is my first post, I’m going to start with a brief reminer of some of the disappointments that inspired this blog.

I eagerly awaited the release of A.F.I.’s decemberunderground.  Even though Sing the Sorrow had definitely tended more towards pop than their earlier albums, I grew to really appreciate it, after my initial shock.  I expected decemberunderground to be even more mainstream, however I was shocked at the degree of the transformation.  The redeeming factor of Sing the Sorrow was that its lyrics remained original, despite the pop beat.  decemberunderground, on the other hand, combined a pop beat with trite lyrics (ex. “the heavens bowed before him/simply a look can break your heart.”)

I was even more excited about Brand New’s release of The Devil and God are Raging Inside of Me.  Their first album, Your Favorite Weapon, though the music was a little repetitive and some of the songs were filled with too much rhyme and cuteness, promised potential.  Their second album, Deja Entendu, more than fulfilled that promise.  Musically, they had matured drastically, and they moved past the overriding theme of their first album (girl trouble) to explore less common story lines (a young boy caught between his love for a girl and his fear of her sexual experience, a man contemplating taking advantage of a drunk girl he met at a bar, performers disillusioned with their craft.)  Brand New certainly changed their sound for their most recent release- unfortunately, they wrote every song to sound like a funeral dirge and wrote a whole collection of songs that were pretty much all about being disappointed in yourself, and acknowledging that everyone else was disappointed in you as well.

Other disappointements from 2006, as well as some raves and more recent reviews will follow in later posts.