Funeral is Arcade Fire at its Best

Photo courtesy Rollingstone.com

Arcade Fire has steadily become one of the most reliably innovative rock bands in existence. If you’re unfamiliar with the band, they’re a large Canadian ensemble consisting of not only a full time lead singer, guitarist, bassist, rhythm guitarist and drummer but also a violinist and organist. Their sound is big, dark and often self-serious. That last aspect is probably why, despite winning a best album Grammy for The Suburbs in 2011, Arcade Fire still hasn’t quite broken through the mainstream ceiling and into the pop-culture stratosphere. The band makes decidedly artistic music and decidedly challenging music. Imagine if every album Kanye did was like the jarring opus, Yeezus. That’s Arcade Fire.

With that mindset driving the band creatively for the past decade, it’s no surprise that each new Arcade Fire album feels like an event in the way that Radiohead albums used to. Each new suite of songs brings with it a new evolution and world view to discover. Whether it’s Neon Bible’s Bush-era malaise or Reflektor’s Haitian fiesta, the band always has something new to show its listeners. But despite that excitement for each new release, I always find myself gravitating towards Funeral, the band’s show stopping 2003 debut.

It’s difficult to measure Funeral by the standards of its predecessors. Sonically, it’s simultaneously their most organic and chaotic album – a seeming contradiction that could be the secret to its staying power. It also shows Arcade Fire at their most naïve, with songs like Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), Wake Up, and Rebellion (Lies) focusing on that primal feeling of immortality and indignation that only comes with youth and only leaves with age and cynicism.

Photo courtesy whatculture.com

That youthful idealism permeates Funeral in a way that would make it all rather obnoxious if it weren’t so damn relatable. Who hasn’t wanted to run away and “forget all we used to know”? And who hasn’t had their heart torn up like Win Butler sings about in album centerpiece Wake Up? And when he sings lines like “They say a watched pot won’t ever boil/ But I closed my eyes and nothing changed” on Neighborhood #4 (Kettles), he does so with such earnestness that you can’t help but buy into it.

In rock music, earnest is too often confused with emo. In this case, Arcade Fire was often called an Emo act by critics that didn’t know how to classify Win Butler’s sentimental crooning. And to be fair, the band occasionally crosses that line, specifically on the teen love anthem Crown of Love. But even that track is rescued by the band’s eclectic ensemble of baroque piano, shape shifting violin, staccato guitar and Regine Chassagne’s haunting background vocals.

"It shows Arcade Fire at their most naive... focusing on that primal feeling of immortality and indignation that only comes with youth and only leaves with age and cynicism."

That staccato guitar drives every single song on Funeral and has become a signature of the band’s sound. Typically it acts more like a bass guitar, jogging along and keeping the pace, but on the raucous Neighborhood #3 (Power Out), it propels everything forward like an unstoppable locomotive. It’s songs like this that keep Arcade Fire from fading into indie obscurity, reaching out to the listener like a warm security blanket. It’s that propulsive guitar that gave Wake Up the pop chops to be used in promos for the NFL, iTunes and several other mainstream endorsers.

But the band keeps that comfort level low on Funeral – not indulging its classic rock sensibilities too much – which could explain why fans of the band often regard Funeral as the low point of its library. As one of my friends said to me in a conversation on Facebook, “we can agree that Funeral is the worst right?” Actually no, no we can’t. In fact, I’d argue (and have been arguing) that Funeral is the strongest full-length – from start to finish – on Arcade Fire’s resume.

Again, it’s all about relatability. Funeral was preceded by a tumultuous period for the band members, with the death of several loved ones all in the course of a few months. Pain and loss are not only themes on the album, they’re accompaniments. It paints a picture of adolescent ire, family secrets and snowy rebellion. Win Butler’s voice was made for these songs and it perfectly conveys that pain with every aching note. The result is more like reading a book of poetry than listening to a rock album. That may sound pretentious and off-putting, but it ends up making Funeral feel genuine in a way few rock albums – its successors included – just don’t capture.

Funeral was an album made with no pretenses or expectations, and the band plays like one with nothing to lose. It’s an enviable position for any band to be in, but even still, it takes a special band to nail it. Arcade Fire did just that with Funeral. For a band that’s built a career of making statements, it’s the strongest statement Arcade Fire has ever made.