Arcade Fire was a band made to fill big spaces: musical spaces; conceptual spaces; emotional spaces. This is true for practical space, alone. Led by the married pair of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne the amount of band members and instruments at any given time mean the group acts, essentially, like a commune. And since the band’s inception they have been moving looking for new places to reside, adopting the manners of whatever place they choose to stay: the church of Neon Bible; the suburbs of…The Suburbs. Reflektor made this clear enough to change the band’s entire name. Now they live in stadiums.
But before any of that there was an indie band from Canada trying to find a sound to fill those rooms. First was an Arcade Fire EP, which somewhat suffers from ambition and sound outpacing resource and song craft (though “No Cars Go” was reworked into an Arcade Fire classic) but was important in forming that persona of youth and wisdom that would be crucial for their album debut. It created something unique from influences ranging from Bright Eyes to our last Record Club candidate U2, swelling with sounds from accordions to violins to craft a sound that stood out not just in the midst of the garage and post-punk revivals, but with any of their contemporaries. People noticed. Important things would happen between the release of the EP and of Funeral, one being the departure of founding member Josh Deu (making him in effect the Pete Best of Canadian rock). Next was their signing to Merge Records, picked in part because of their oversight of Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea.
But the crucial factor in the creation of Funeral is that which drips from its very title: death. Both Win and Régine would lose grandparents during the album’s creation, and fellow band member Richard Parry would lose an aunt. Descriptions tend to differ in how many of the band lost loved ones during this time, which in some way aids in keeping it a tragedy as opposed to a statistic. Arcade Fire felt that this had affected the music process so much so as to put it forefront, framing every song in its context. The thing is, we established before how much of the band’s music is based in location, and at least one song in every other album contains the album’s title. But there is no funeral in Funeral. Instead it is set in neighbourhoods, in houses, in beds, in the backseats of cars.
The effects of death are not just in the immediate or in an allocated day of grief, but in the weeks and months that we get out of bed, when we let the psychic pain seep in through the strangest and most mundane connections. Arcade Fire recognises this. But they also recognise that the means to carry is in its own way cause for celebration. Funeral injects so much hope and positivity into otherwise dark environments. The music throws its grief into the air like a blizzard. Like the shards of a shattered bulb.
Funeral’s first half pertains to a large conceptual suite, “Neighbourhood,” about a suburb in the midst of the Great Ice Storm of 1998. This is evident from the notes of ivory “Tunnel”, which rain on the song as if they were snowflakes as Win sets the scene. For an opening to an album – and for most an entire career – its story of two teenagers planning to run away from home sets the themes and tone from the outset. Win has a voice and mind that fluctuates between adolescence and intelligence, knowing in their hearts that they have to move away from tragedy and from past generations but not knowing in their minds how to do so (with them preparing for a family until they forget “all the names that we used to know.”)
“Neighbourhood” immediately moves from underground tunnels into space. “Laika” is named for the first animal sent into space, and itself is related to the narrator’s brother Alex, who is burdened by the whole neighbourhood to become something great. The allusions to Alexander the Great are also clear; in fact the way this “Neighbourhood” relates to any specific location makes it almost mythic. And like many of their Americana predecessors, Arcade Fire discusses the issues of loneliness in full spaces. All of that doesn’t overtake the sheer musicality of the song, with accordions, interlocking guitars, marching drums and Win less singing than chanting preparing for the adventure ahead. How that adventure goes is anyone’s guess.
“Une année sans lumière” (A Year Without Light if my year of French Class taught me anything) does not label itself as part of the Neighbourhood suite, but with lyrics about lights blacking out and parental guidance it so links to the themes of the others that it acts a kind of midpoint, almost in the same manner as “Jig of Life” did for Kate Bush in Hounds of Love. And as a midpoint it starts quiet and contemplative, with guitar strings ringing upon suspended strings. Then, like other songs on Funeral, it breaks into something else entirely, erupting with sound and speeding up, as though there is indeed “something there” casting the shadow, and they have to run away from it.
This segues forcefully into the next official part of “Neighbourhood”, “Power Out.” Here tuned percussion again takes place of snow, but the xylophones don’t hide what is a dark narrative of kids lacking purpose and direction. The future is something left deliberately dark to them, be that the literal power outage or people hiding truths. Win’s vocals are so desperate in the verses that his vocal chords sound like they about to break. But amid all that desperation hope is still there; the guitars are essentially danceable (that bridge!), and the melodic chorus that tells us to go all Super Saiyan with the lights in our hearts help anchor the whole song with a sense of purpose.
Instead of ending “Neighbourhood” with any big bang, “7 Kettles” is the quietest, almost folk track on the entire record, the melancholy building with crying strings amidst boiling kettles (of which I presume there are seven). Of all the songs on Funeral, this is the one that is the most actually death filled, dystopian in its vision of burning pensioners and babies that you “can’t raise on motor oil”. The Neighbourhood and its morals are brought into question again, though much more explicit, but even this scenario is again given hope. Acknowledging that the passing of time itself will hopefully mould life to the way the narrator wishes, “Neighbourhood” fades out on a note of ambiguity.
The second half of Funeral still ebbs and flows as masterfully as the first half of the record, but the epic scope makes way for scenarios much more intimate. It begins with one of my highlights from the album, “Crown of Love”( I could say that about the whole album, but as it as close to an Arcade Fire “deep cut” as Funeral gets I just wished to highlight it). It still follows images from Neighbourhood, with the eyelid imagery furthered with one of the record’s most evocative lines (“I carved your name across my eyelids/ You pray for rain, I pray for blindness”). A waltzing thump of piano chords and crying violin, it is a plea of both love and forgiveness. With comparisons to a cancer we are not sure the narrator truly wants either, and the waltz designed for two is replaced in the outro with beats and violins that race and move outward.
This moves vigorously into what is probably the band’s most famous song, and gift to football stadiums everywhere. I blame “Wake Up” for every wailing chant in indie rock for the last ten years, but here its uplifting, unifying qualities are produced by a narrator who highlights their most sceptical and cynical self, like another Funeral song seeing things as a lie. The chant is for them before they can unify others (also holding “their mistake up”) and with the roaring and drums it’s hard not to be moved with them, the power so great that the final “You better look out for love” almost it sounds like it comes from another song. It is as though the song itself is bursting with new energy.
That new energy might have also come from adding a new perspective, with Régine taking lead vocal duties for one section. She gets the full spotlight “Haiti”, without question the most left field of this album’s musical direction, yet still managing to keep with Funeral’s consistency. Strings mostly move out in the way for woodwind and acoustic direction, in keeping in tone with the Haitian culture that has so influenced Arcade Fire’s music (he said, as though he had any kind of authority on the matter). I won’t pretend to be able to speak French, but the English lyrics contrast the bereavement of a loved one with the mass death of those in the army, and how they all relate to the blood of her home culture.
In the final notes of the war in “Haiti”, the marching drums of rebellion reveal themselves. The simple yet powerful bass of “Rebellion (Lies)” gives strength to continuous piano chords and sporadic guitar notes. Win returns for his final vocal duties on Funeral, and has described himself in this song as the “Pied Piper” leading the charge of kids who have been lied to. I can’t really think of a better way to describe the track, as the guitars run through the path paved through by tribal cries of “Lies,” and asking for those closed eyes of Neighbourhood to be open again. In an album full of inspirational cries, this stands as maybe its strongest and loudest.
With those final cries Win leaves the scene, leaving Régine alone “In the Backseat”. We assume the album is ending on a quiet and contemplative closer, with light piano and strings complementing Régine’s youthful, Bjork like vocals perfectly. And with that youth we get our most overt, precise death on the entire record, named Alice, and vividly describes the car crash which killed her. We assume it is going to continue intimate and closed off. Then, almost out of nowhere, Régine’s wails usher in the wails of every other instrument: that of guitar, violin, piano and almost every instrument that has come to define this record. It is one of the most uplifting and glorious moments in all of music. It’s no accident that the last words of Funeral are “My Whole Life”.
Funeral is an album unafraid of the most heightened of sentiment without ever being sentimental. In a world of abandoned children, fracturing generations and the most aching of depressions, it still manages to soar with an optimism that is only heightened only by its acknowledgement of the most hopeless and desperate times. With death at its heart it takes disparate areas of people, each with their own ultimately unique and ultimately similar sorrows, in the hopes of turning it into an ultimate joy of life. In many ways that is what a funeral is.
But after you’ve dealt with emotions and issues so large, where do you take the rebellion now? Take ‘em to church…
What did you think, though?
Arcade Fire Album Rankings
- Funeral