#46 Arcade Fire – Funeral
Arcade Fire burst onto the scene in 2004 with one of the most important albums of the decade. “Funeral” burst onto the album discussing the somber subject of death but at the same time being very uplifting. What Win Butler and co. are offering on these albums is a theatrical performance in their music. I say this by not allowing this to get to their heads. This is a band that arrives onstage and is having plenty of fun and not just going through the motions. Their music feels spiritual, offering a bit of a “Revival” feeling. Considering some of the emotions coming out about this time (2004), with the fall of Emo, Arcade Fire wants you to stand in the aisle and feel the power of the music, they want to walk up on the stage and heal you.
Funeral is one of those albums that was lasted the test of time I think that partly because of the beauty they are able to portray even though what they are portraying is very sorrowful. The other concept that Arcade Fire holds onto is the idea of working with a central theme for an album and sticking to it. Each of their albums have represented main ideas (Death, Religion, The Suburbs) and the songs all revolve around this main idea rather than just sticking the first 12 songs onto an album.
I still remember listening to this album for the first time and how the first track Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) struck me in such a way that I knew that this was something special. The album had come out in 2004 and there just hopeful, that we are not going to stand still. Instead of watching my parents cry I will dig a tunnel to your house and we will go to the middle of the city and push onward because I do not want the sadness around me (in my neighborhood) to hold me down.
It sets off a stream of concepts wrapped around this very concept of not letting death control us but also not allowing dreams misguide us or failing to live up to our own expectations. It sets off not about remembering the past and being somber but pushing towards the future.
Also, realize that this album came a couple years after 9/11 and I think that the shock of the event had somewhat stifled Americans in their ability to live and this album suggests the complete opposite. This country has never had to deal with a tragedy on this level, unlike other parts of the world so our response was overly somber. We had lived in an almost “Funeral-like” state and what Arcade Fire suggests is to snap out of it and did it with such a fashion that it was not offensive but inspiring.