Maybe it’s the lack of the Bush administration’s anti-freedom agenda, or maybe it’s the decriminalized bud, but for whatever reason, Canada has been spawning exciting new music over the last few years. First, there’s the creative explosion of the Toronto scene, with experimental pop collective Broken Social Scene and post-punk outfit the Constantines as its most notorious residents. The Vancouver indie rockers Hot Hot Heat and the New Pornographers have also put out solid records. Montreal’s weirdo pop scene tossed up the Unicorns last year and has now produced the Arcade Fire.
The Arcade Fire’s debut album, Funeral, has gained attention in the American underground and seems to be posing as the proverbial Next Big Thing to splatter all over the pages of Rolling Stone and SPIN.
The critical gushing over this album from venerable bastions of indie rock snobbery like Pitchfork media is rarely seen and even more rarely warranted. While the reviews have certainly been hyperbolic, there’s no denying that the Arcade Fire deserves much of the praise heaped upon it. The band doesn’t sound much like anyone else, but you can catch bits of Modest Mouse, Broken Social Scene, Gabriel Byrne and David Bowie scattered throughout. The difficulty of naming definitive influences is a testament to the band’s originality and the album’s diversity, which can make for drastic shifts between songs.
The element that ties everything together is the alternately earnest and anguished vocals. From the driving, jittery rock of “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” to the sweeping, anthemic choruses of “Wake Up” or the glam-rock waltz of “Crown of Love,” the tortured cries of husband-and-wife frontpeople Win Butler and Regine Chassagne carry through every arrangement. Depending on your viewpoint, the vocals either make or break the album. Virtually every reviewer hastily goes out of their way to note that the Arcade Fire is not emo, although some have contended that the band is everything the genre should be.
The Arcade Fire is distinctive in its sound, but the band falls prey to the same faults as some of the most maligned emo bands, edging their pathos too far over the brink of credibility a little too often. There are some excellent songs on the album, but just as many that fail to resonate. Better bands are coming out of Canada today, but not many. If the Arcade Fire manages to break the Canuck scene open on American soil, then Funeral’s faults can be even more easily overlooked.
