This Winki's 5 Star Albums: NEON BIBLE by ARCADE FIRE (A Lost Soul In the City of Pagans)

Speaking about Neon Bible is a bit hard for me personally for it may instantly become involved with prejudice and I was never about that. But anyway, I couldn’t help putting this album in my 5 star albums list (as well as choosing it as 2007's album of the year). What I have conceived and interpreted from these pleasant streams of heartfelt sound will be kept confidential and stay untouched in my head. People can conclude different aspects of their subliminal state by listening to Neon Bible but those ones who can genuinely believe in this holy spell of disbelief are seldom seen.

Win Butler and Régine Chassagne may both be well-praised by what they accomplished on Funeral. So, in case of becoming immortal, Funeral was simply enough. It discussed family life and the traumas involved in the most honest possible way. The melodies were tender and aching simultaneously. The performance was timeless and most importantly the mood was as cohesive as a classic Charles Dickens masterpiece. Perhaps I’m going to need some extra space in another post to explain the genius songwriting of Funeral, but here I am to write on the next milestone Arcade Fire has succeeded in creating. If Funeral was Butler and Chassagne’s new born infant, Neon Bible is their grown up unfortunate son seeking something to believe and being desperate to find it. It’s more than conspicuous to see from the album title that Neon Bible is about faith and how we are all desperate to find it. No one could make a clear although dismal depiction of such a state better. The blackness that surrounds the Bible is the atmosphere that speaks for itself throughout the whole experience. Even the escape tale of “No Cars Go” that comes from the band’s self-titled EP has been created to fit in this work, not the EP! (although you hear it with much better instrumentation and mix this time). The first thing a superficial music ear expects from a huge band’s new album is the degree of its high fidelity. That’s typically what you hear on most Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead albums, in fact in their two recent works (In Rainbows and The Slip) being hi-fi and a purity (quality) in sound has been taken much more seriously than the music itself (don’t take them as low points, it’s just how they sound). On the other side of the story (the lo-fi) it’s all about experimentation and therefore it makes sense that way. Three good examples are Bee Thousand by Guided By Voices, The Microphones’ The Glow Pt. 2 and early four tape recordings of Devendra Banhart. When I first got Neon Bible through the internet I was suspicious if I have received the good quality one or not, the bit-rate was high but the sound was… you know! It was all in my mind until I bought an original copy from Bangkok and saw it’s surprisingly the same. I guess that was where I got the whole point. Arcade Fire is playing music to its most artistic state i.e. they are emphasizing on their beliefs, they are not screaming their guts out and the drums are not The Prodigy. Neon Bible is a hesitation trip (or temporary residency) in a God-forgotten city by the shore, far from anything to believe in, far from any religion to stick to and far from what you have been before. You physically wander around but literally you are walking in your subliminal mind. Is this another rapid eye movement hour or not? I cannot tell but I can tell you that this is about the time that you cannot even trust your soul for it has forsaken your body to a faraway lighthouse of lust and fatigue. The past has already destructed and the future is unwritten therefore you’re again left alone. The beginning state of this haunting trip is accurately spoken in the breathtaking opener “Black Mirror”: “I know a time is coming. All words will lose their meaning. Please show me something that isn't mine but mine is the only kind that I relate to”. This black mirror that knows no reflection and knows not pride or vanity is somehow the wanderer’s reflection. A reflection that does not trespass your bright side, religion and faith is history now. “Keep the Car Running” is your unconscious and unaware soul leaning towards fleeing and running away from this madness. This restlessness is a key factor in Neon Bible. It never leaves you. Win Butler keeps this shivering coldness alive all across his pale voice, unlike what you heard on Funeral, he would rather keep his bravery encrypted inside his chest and out of reach therefore his high octaves are heard less.

The self-titled track is about the Bible itself (this Bible lacks the holy tag at the beginning, therefore it’s no longer worth worshiping and praising, in fact quite on the contrary). So it’s performed in a conservative sense. It’s like a whisper to an ear filled with denial, a lost catalog that warns you not to lick your fingers when you turn the page. “Intervention” is your unrevealed confessions; here in this obsolete town it’s a good opportunity to divulge it. “Black Waves/Bad Vibrations” is actually two Q&A tracks, the latter has probably the most appropriate title, it is somehow a defying respond to Beach Boys' timeless “Good Vibrations”. Looks like Chassagne is giving survival hopes to his beloved man in French, she’s somehow rejecting all those psychedelic joy hidden in Brian Wilson’s schizophrenic existence, because there’s probably nothing left of that, all you are is this desperate creature seeking help in the midst of the midnight’s tidal waves. This dual song is the most haunting sound you hear on the album. And then comes “Ocean Of Noise”, a calm surrender from the mouth of an injured defeated soldier. If the ending orchestration doesn’t sound ethereal and superior, then what does? Breathtaking and marvelous at the same time. Another favorable masterwork comes right after this one. “The Well and the Lighthouse” is more adventurous than the rest. The restlessness has now returned with full power, your soul is not following you but you are hearing it from outside the well. That’s why you’re cold and shivering again. You’re anima is tenderly making a chorus with you, she’s completing your verses, but what is the spell of that lighthouse that keeps you apart, that prevents you from believing and is it that essential to believe in something (even love) after all this misery? Heaven is only in your head. The parentheses used in “(Antichrist Television Blues)” are here on purpose, since it’s a distraction point to that mentioned state, these murmurs are the scribbled lines caused an written by oblivion in your past, it has nothing to do with now and present. They’re somehow small evidence to the state you are now in this city. Working in a building downtown must have exhausted you and your soul. “Windowsill” is nothing but a continuation to that song in tranquility. It’s so exciting mentioning two other factors to this amnesia: MTV and World War II have been both used in the same way, has MTV been this destructing so far? Ask all indie music pioneers for a clearer answer. It can’t be that irrelevant, though. “No Cars Go” acts as the missing piece to this puzzle, Butler and wife have found shelter somewhere at last. The path of glory is somehow found. The orchestration becomes livelier and surfaces for the first time. It had been kept in depth until now. And the dismal closer “My Body Is A Cage” is still vague to me. Did Neon Bible really had to end up in sorrow? Are you the only veteran cripple soldier left? The church organ that you hear is nothing like good news. It burst into an ocean of sound with marching bands drums, the end.

I feel more relieved by now. I wanted to write about this album for ages. I’m out of Arcade Fire’s debt. This album never escaped my iPod and it’s among the few albums I can always listen to. I hope Arcade Fire never stop making soulful gems like Funeral and Neon Bible.

Arcade Fire's Official website
Neon Bible website (If you haven't checked it out yet, it's time!)
Arcade Fire on MySpace