James Christopher Monger, All Music Guide

The Arcade Fire are not an emo band. Fronted by the husband-and-wife team of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the group's emotional assault — rendered even more poignant by the dedications to recently departed family members contained in the liner notes — is brave, empowering, and dusted with something that many of that genre's angst-fueled acts desperately lack: an element of danger. Funeral' s mourners — specifically Butler and Chassagne — inhabit the same post-apocalyptic world as London Suede's Dog Man Star; they are broken, beaten, and ferociously romantic, reveling in the brutal beauty of their surroundings like a heathen Adam & Eve. "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)," the first of four metaphorical forays into the geography of the soul, follows a pair of young lovers who meet in the middle of the town through tunnels that connect to their bedrooms. Over a soaring piano lead that's effectively doubled by distorted guitar, they reach a Lord of the Flies-tinged utopia where they can't even remember their names or the faces of their weeping parents. Butler sings like Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood used to play, like a lion-tamer whose whip grows shorter with each and every lash. He can barely contain himself, and when he lets loose it's both melodic and primal, like Berlin-era Bowie or British Sea Power. "Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)" examines suicidal desperation through an angular Gang of Four prism; the hypnotic wash of strings and subtle meter changes of "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)" winsomely capture the mundane doings of day-to-day existence; and "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)," Funeral's victorious soul-thumping core, is a goose bump-inducing rallying cry centered around the notion that "the power's out in the heart of man, take it from your heart and put it in your hand." The Arcade Fire are not bereft of whimsy. "Crown of Love" is like a wedding cake dropped in slow motion, utilizing a Johnny Mandel-style string section and a sweet, soda-pop stand chorus to provide solace to a jilted lover yearning for a way back into the fold, and "Haiti" relies on a sunny island melody to explore the complexities of Chassagne's mercurial homeland. However, it's the sheer power and scope of cuts like "Wake Up" — featuring all 15 musicians singing in unison — and the mesmerizing, early-Roxy Music pulse of "Rebellion (Lies)" that make Funeral the remarkable achievement that it is. These are songs that pump blood back into the heart as fast and furiously as it's draining from the sleeve on which it beats, and by the time Chassagne dissects her love of riding "In the Backseat" with the radio on, despite her desperate fear of driving, Funeral's singular thread is finally revealed; love does conquer all, especially love for the cathartic power of music.

Almost Cool

Almost Cool, October 14th, 2004

I first heard of the Arcade Fire on a self-released disc that they released themselves through their website. I found a few small articles about them that claimed they put on one hell of a live show and that their somewhat questionably produced EP was just the tip of the iceberg. Even on those rough tracks, a sort of reckless energy shone through in places that was completely infectious and had me looking forward to the next effort from the group. Funeral is their full-length debut and it's already been lauded by many as one of the best discs of the year. Like another notible Canadian band that broke last year after a stunning follow-up release (Broken Social Scene), it mixes styles effortlessly and keeps you guessing and interested nearly throughout.

If I were to have just heard the first half of the disc, I probably would have proclaimed it the best of the year as well. Opening with "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)," the group takes off with dense sheets of guitars, piano, and rumbling drums that all propel a gorgeous track that literally bursts at the seams by the end. "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" mixes shouted vocal harmonies with strings, accordion, and more sharp guitars for great dynamic effect while "Une Anne Sans Lumiere" takes things down a bit for a nice breather.

Just about the time you think the group is going to get all calm though, they unleash what is easily one of the best tracks I've heard this entire year with "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)." Although technically the track has a fairly simple structure (repetitive percussion with alternately quiet and loud sections and vocals), it builds with an infectious glee that makes you want to run out into the street at midnight and scream at the top of your lungs along with it while alternately smashing things and celebrating life.

After such a glorious beginning, the album again takes a bit of a breather for a couple tracks before coming back with the sing-along "Wake Up." Opening with an epic wash of noise and an almost choir backing, it drops off into a more guitar-based close while "Haiti" relies on a simple keyboard melody to make things float. The closer of "In The Backseat" falls a little too close to the weepy side of things, but like the rest of the small dips on the album, it doesn't diminish the overall quality of the release by much. In a year full of great albums, this is another entry that will arrive somewhere near the top.

Rickey Wright, Amazon.com

"Wake Up," a track from the debut full-length by Montreal's Arcade Fire, builds from a midtempo strum into a "You Can't Hurry Love" gallop, which singer Win Butler interrupts with a yell: "You better look out below!" Somehow, none of this hits the ear as overemotional. Throughout Funeral, the band augments its five-piece lineup with string sections, weaving near-cinematic, folk-influenced chamber pop that slots in somewhere between Belle and Sebastian's delicacy and the robust classicism of ’80s New Zealand bands such as the Chills and the Verlaines. The album drips with enough romanticism to rival Jeff Buckley's Grace, from the dreamscape of "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" ("Meet me in the middle of the town, forget all we used to know") to the epic realism of "In the Backseat." One of the indie rock community’s most beloved finds of 2004, Arcade Fire are poised to win over even more listeners.

Product Description
Montreal's Arcade Fire brings a theatricality, an intensity, an insanity, and a penchant for amazing hooks to their debut full-length. You've never heard such energy, beauty, and emotion from such a young band. Fans of Neutral Milk Hotel, Broken Social Scene, and Roxy Music's first two albums will have a new favorite band.

Matt Warwick, BBC 6 Music

This album is a work of art, which, by rights, means it should be hanging on rock's wall of fame. But, as we all know, so many masterpieces just end up in the dusty attic of lost classics.

Not that this record needs commercial success to boost its quality. Songs are peppered with just the right amount of strings, piano, guitars, accordions and other instruments that contribute wonderfully to this collection of angular symphonies. And perhaps it was little surprise to discover that Arcade Fire originate from the same macabre Montreal musical gallery as Bittersweet brood specialists The Dears.

Recorded by the five-piece after a string of tragic family bereavements - hence the title - the album sleeve dedications read like a town war memorial. But there is an undoubted call to arms on this record, beautifully observed by the wistful Une Année Sans Lumière. And it doesn't stop you being uplifted when a peak follows some of the very deep emo-troughs this album throws at you. You don't even have to be slow to be sullen, as proved on the soaring Talking Heads-esque quirk-fest Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) and punchy anthem Rebellion (Lies).

But it's the vocal variability of husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne that gives this album it's best shot of rising above the musical masses. Butler's voice often changes mid-song: from Bowie through David Byrne and Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue and back again.

It's well worth seeking out what is an intricate, widescreen album. And, by rights, it should currently be the toast of art rock. Don't be put off by the sentiment - death is as good a subject matter as any. Besides, all the greatest artists are dead, aren't they? Long live Arcade Fire.

The Arcade Fire: Win Butler (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric 12-string guitar, piano, synthesizer, bass guitar); Regine Chassagne (vocals, accordion, recorder, piano, synthesizer, xylophone, drums, percussion); Howard Bilerman (guitar, drums); Richard Reed Parry (accordion, piano, organ, synthesizer, xylophone, double bass, percussion); William Butler (synthesizer, xylophone, bass instrument, percussion). Engineers: Howard Bilerman; Richard Reed Parry; The Arcade Fire.

This Montreal ensemble's fiery debut is marked by surging guitars, soulful strings, driving drums, brilliant bass lines, and the quavering vocals of married couple Win Butler and Regine Chassagne. The group's song structures careen through a vast territory of musical and personal history, with lyrics warm with memories of childhood neighborhoods and deceased loved ones, resulting in an alternating current of joy and sadness. Favorably compared to the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, and Broken Social Scene, the Arcade Fire's sound seems to come from a lifetime of listening to the Cure, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, and many others--even a dose of soul gets worked into these grand anthems. Chassagne delivers some spellbinding vocals on "Haiti," while the tinkling piano and strings on "Crown of Love" conjure up a heartbroken surfside prom. In 2004, this made many critics' year-end lists, and it's no wonder--the songs on FUNERAL are so packed with unique instrumentation, mesmerizing build-ups, and galvanizing tempo changes that they seem culled from some enigmatic, decade-spanning rock anthology.

Kory Grow, CMJ New Music First

Putting the "fun" back in Funeral, the debut disc from Montréal indie-pop sextet Arcade Fire exhumes instrumentation extinct since third-grade music class (xylophones, recorders and string quintets) and sets them ablaze in anything but a macabre fashion. Each song has its own feel, from ambience akin to Twin Peaks siren Julee Cruise to Modest Mouse's perpetual bounce, all with Arcade Fire's quirky arrangements. Singer Win Butler occasionally resembles Neil Young circa After The Gold Rush or Conor Oberst on "Crown Of Love" and "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)," as his voice wavers in pitch with Young's tone-deaf allure. After a subdued intro, "Wake Up" bursts into a polyphonic spree, layering a "Do They Know It's Christmas?"-style choral part over a slow, sad-yet-triumphant march, similar to the Rosebuds' quieter music, until it transitions into a Bowie-on-Broadway outro. With pseudotheatrical zeal, Butler tells a story of children waking up so they can grow up right, as he sees "where I am goin' to be when the reaper… touches my hand." A vaudevillian handbill/lyric sheet accompanies the disc with program notes and Funeral's release date replacing the performance date. Rather than introduce themselves with a depression session, Arcade Fire celebrate change, making Funeral more like a Canadian Day of the Dead.

Scott Reid, Cokemachineglow, September 22nd, 2004

Faced with relentless tragedies and life-altering events, some might understandably choose to retreat deeply inward, breaking themselves off from the outside world and closing any or all communication with even the closest of friends. Others, finding no use for such nonsense, find the urge to create --- to exorcise such experiences into as grand and cathartic a statement as they possibly can. Having, as a group, been through E.-level melodrama since the recording of their debut EP almost two years ago (including numerous deaths, band break-ups/rebuilding and, to top it all off, an inter-band marriage between its two vocalists, Win Butler and Régine Chassagne), Arcade Fire have chosen to channel all of their still-gestating hardships into the one thing that brought them, with roots from the US, Canada and Haiti (currently calling Montreal their home), together in the first place.

It's only been the span of a single year since their independently released EP Arcade Fire, before all of the funerals and weddings, but for those lucky enough to catch the group's live show in any stage of its continual development, what the band delivers with Funeral---their first full length for a label, Merge, and the result of all of that focused misfortune---shouldn't be too much of a shock. Far more intense and animate than the soothing and romantic atmospheric folk that had taken up the majority of Arcade Fire, it captures both the incredible energy the band exerts live and Win Butler's bizarre and eccentric control (his voice a compelling mixture between Mercury Rev's Jonathan Donahue, Broken Social Scene's Kevin Drew and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst) over his audience, from the largest arrangement to the sparest of acoustic ballads.

His group's music, unlike the vocal mannerisms, isn't so easy to pin down or cross-reference. The post-David Baker Mercury Rev feel that had been deeply imprinted in Arcade Fire bookends "Old Flame" and "Vampire Forest Fire" (both rival most of Funeral's best) is still present, especially on opener "Neighbourhood 1 (Tunnels)," though now filtered through a larger sonic palette at the hands of a much tighter songwriter. It picks up exactly where "Vampire" had left off, but, much like the music's relation to the album's somber title, feels far more celebratory and fulfilled, performed with a passion that had been noticeably absent on Arcade Fire's weaker (see: too relaxed) moments. Funeral also makes the most of the group's several multi-instrumentalists, offering an array of instrumental counterpoints, from violin, piano and accordion to strings, bells and synths.

These aren't the only things the full length shares with their EP, but it's awfully close. Funeral sounds less like a Broken Social Scene side-project (personal favorite "Headlights Look Like Diamonds" bears an uncannily resemblance to "Almost Crimes'" verse melody in particular, though Butler wrote his track first) and more like a more varied, symphonic take on the Walkmen, a focused Broken Social Scene or even, at times, a sober, methodical Modest Mouse. Though you aren't likely to hear much of either on the Polyphonic Spree-esque free-for-all "Wake Up" (long-since used to open their live shows, and it works unbelievably well), the beautiful, scaled back Post out-take "In The Back Seat" or the "The Tide Is High"-via-a sedated Enon highlight "Haiti." Traces of great artists---from obscure to seminal, indie to mainstream---are evident throughout, though never as mere superficial rehashing.

The album's neighbourhood suite---"Tunnels," "Laika," "Power Out" & "7 Kettles"---alone finds the band exploring all of the greatest aspects of their live show and the unique, enveloping dream-folk of Arcade Fire's "My Heart Is An Apple" and "No Cars Go." "Laika" and "Power Out" continue to grow on "Tunnels'" slow, brooding climax, with Butler's voice breaking into Oberst-like wails, and the quality somehow manages to grow with each, as well. Both continue in the suite's lyrical focus on markedly personal, relationship-oriented couplets---from off-hand in-jokes like "Come on Alex / You can do it!" to more considered, poignant dissections of young love and rebellion. Musically, the climax continues to grow until "Power Out" explodes from the speakers, dropping 'Laika's" great chorus hook in turn for a blistering atmosphere that somehow finds room for lullabyesque xylophone tinkling throughout.

The final piece of the suite, "7 Kettles," brings a beautiful close to the record's first side that, despite its bland chorus lyric, is oddly hypnotic and compelling in a way that was absent during the opening tracks. Save, of course, the equally moving "Une Annee Sans Lumiere," which acts as a short intermission between both halves of the suite. "Lumiere" isn't quite as successful as "7 Kettles" as an evolution of Arcade Fire's ambitious folk leanings, though its extended closing --- which includes a steady electric guitar (which wouldn't, much like the rest of the song, I might add, sound too out of place on The Joshua Tree) and Butler's frenzied vocals (one of the few moments where the record reminds me of BSS) --- is certainly one of the highlights of the record's almost flawless first half.

"Crown of Love" opens the second side and picks up the tempo once again, making its Foreigner-ish title/chorus lyric easily forgivable with its Hawksley Workman-performing-Conor Obert's "False Advertising" swagger, nicely juxtaposing the desperate chorus pleas with some very sharp, morose imagery, ranging from "I carved your name across my eyelids. . . / You pray for rain, I pray for blindness" to "My love keeps growing / Still the same, just like a cancer." "Wake Up" may come on a little strong, especially following the mid-tempo swells of "Love," but, much like its task in opening their live shows, it pulls us back into the group's ability to craft one hell of a orchestrated pop epic with enough twists behind it to make its march an essential part of Funeral---at least before the song breaks into the "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" beat, triggers the word "jitterbug" and prances its way to a underwhelming close.

Luckily, ""Haiti" (vaguely reminiscent of Arcade Fire's mediocre "Woodland National Anthem") is there to make up for any slight missteps, and only the monotonous and prominent one-note piano solo that is persistent throughout the song's final verse could be seen as a flaw. Chassagne's vocals take a less prominent role than usual, instead gently nudging forward the ingeniously simple three chord progression, encased in wavering synths and distant atmospherics. It flows seamlessly into "Rebellion (Lies)," which picks up where "Wake Up" had left off, returning from "Haiti's" psychedelic take on highly accessible '80s pop; once again a deceptively simple three chord riff lays behind a invigorated Butler, who saves the song from its overly pompous chorus (the chanting isn't the album's finest addition) and hit-and-miss lyrics with one of the record's best vocal performances.

Which leaves just "In the Back Seat," Chassagne's only other vocal lead, to close out the incredibly ambitious body of Funeral. Though clearly not the track's only memorable or moving quality, her vocal similarity to Bjork becomes especially clear here, much as it did on Arcade Fire's meandering "I'm Sleeping in a Submarine"---which, despite its whirling vocal tag and inventive build, fails to take off quite like "Back Seat." Even before she hits the chilling high note during the song's climax, Chassagne gives us what is, by far, her best effort yet, pondering the simple joys of experiencing life as a passenger, merely taking everything in instead of actively controlling it; the music builds from awakening strings and piano to yet another cacophonic blow-out, exalting the gorgeous chorus melody into another stratosphere altogether.

And there we have it. The album that fans of their live show knew was arriving, and a wonderful surprise to anyone else that wasn't so lucky to know what has been, until know, localized in small bars across North America. To compare the group's two records is ultimately useless, as the former makes the best of its lo-fi trappings, developing an early template that would be the starting block for their full length. Funeral, on the other hand, is a realization of what they'd set out to practice with Arcade Fire, and is a resounding success on all levels---the group clearly able to make something incredible out of the familiar, and something inexplicably moving out of one emotionally draining year.

Gary Jansz, Delusions of Adequacy, September 6th, 2004

There’s an unsung rivalry that exists between Montreal and Toronto that is not unlike the 1950s grudge matches between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees possessed a powerful front office that had all the money it needed to build one of the most formidable baseball dynasties. The Dodgers, a comparatively poorer organization, played with the hungry spirit of the eternal underdogs managing to slowly elevate themselves from years in the cellar to finally capturing a pennant and eventually a world championship. And so Montreal, far from the prying eyes and ears of Toronto’s money, hype machine, and Canadian music industry, has flourished without this centralization of industry machinery. It has given rise to a certain organic innovation and experimentation, and often without the aforementioned resources (or hindrances, depending on how you see  it).

It’s true that great avante-experimental art emanates from key Montreal labels like Constellation and Alien8, but all too often the intransigence that has become synonymous with those labels belies an absence of the pure joy and ecstasy that a four-minute pop song can evoke. So it’s promising to hear bands like the Unicorns, Soft Canyon (both on Alien8 ironically), The Dears, and now The Arcade Fire adding another level of ferocious and anthemic pop to the Montreal landscape.

With the debut album Funeral, this young multi-instrumentalist six-piece has crafted one of the most engaging and thrilling pop statements of 2004. Built around the song writing talents of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, The Arcade Fire’s canon is steeped in the finest traditions of pop music from the last 30 years. These artists have managed to excavate some of the highlights of great moments in pop and then sculpted pure gems out of the granite.

It all starts with Neighbourhood #1, exuding Pixies charm, while fourth track, Neighbourhood #3, brings to mind a rawer version of the Style Council stripped of their 80s sheen. Like a clarion call to somnambulists of the world, Wake Up rides in on a tidal wave of rousing “whoaaa-oh’s,” only to change mid-song and outro with a Supremes-styled backbeat. Although there are brief nods to the Pixies, The Dears, and, yes, even Broken Social Scene, there are also some unlikely well-placed references. Snippets of carefully placed Stax and Motown acknowledgements are littered throughout Funeral, not self-consciously or contrived, but with a certain care and awareness of soul-pop alchemy. There are even a few songs where I can swear I hear the ghost of Dexy’s Midnight Runner’s much-maligned classic Don’t Stand Me Down. You can always tell when a band has grown up listening and understanding the subtle weaves in the great American pop, rock n’ roll, and soul tapestry by how effectively they manage to distil its finer moments into such a heady elixir – no mean feat for a band so young.

While many bands find their groove having gained hard-won experience and maturity from membership in previous bands – Jeff Tweedy’s migration from Uncle Tupelo to the heights achieved in Wilco as an example – The Arcade Fire illustrates an assured confidence for a debut record, which most bands don’t achieve until their third or forth release. The Yanks and the Dodgers would have killed for this kind of rookie talent.

Jesus Chigley, Drowned in Sound

For all its permanent relevance and worldwide resonance, death still remains mostly shrouded in mystery - clawed at desperately by those who grieve looking for explanation, justification and recompense. The catharsis that emerges is essentially bile - an amalgam of our inability to accept and articulate loss. In the hands of artists however, catharsis becomes something altogether more beatific, something which can deconstruct death and rebuild it. This is the ethos of The Arcade Fire, and one which has made one of the most impressive and confident debuts of the year.

Now available on iTunes (and through Rough Trade on February 28th) the aptly titled 'Funeral' attacks from so many disparate directions that it's difficult to pin down and appreciate on initial listens. Encompassing chamber pop melodies, angular art-rock, lavish orchestration and post-punk vocals, its sheer sonic size and ambition goes some way towards justifying the amount of gushing praise that's been heaped upon this album since its September release on Merge last year. The fact that the music is so paradoxically life-affirming and euphoric makes it much easier to write, what now feel like, trite hyperboles.

'Crown Of Love' is greatly representative of 'Funeral' at it's heart - theatrical and measured but with a healthy dose of chaos. Stately strings play host to a heavenly, languid melody underscored with low piano thumps and Win Butler's apologetic croon to a lost love - "If you still want me/Please forgive me/The crown of love has fallen from me." It swells gradually until Howard Bilerman's disco rhythms (a recurring feature) grab the song by the throat and hoist it skywards, the strings stabbing in perfect harmony. 'Neighborhood #2 (Laika)' (the second of four 'Neighborhood's throughout the album) is much more immediate, with Win Butler and Régine Chassagne singing with enough passion to convince you life is being literally wrenched from them at the mic. It darts between an accordian-led sway to a hypnotic punk chorus backed by a similarly driving string section and is an obvious choice for single release.

Lyrically, The Arcade Fire keep a comfortable distance from the pretentious and overblown. The rich imagery of 'Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)' sets grieving against a town buried in snow, "And if my parents are crying/Then i'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours" and whilst the latter parts of 'Rebellion (Lies)' veer dangerously close to The Polyphonic Spree ("Now here's the sun, it's alright!/Now here's the moon, it's alright!") its bombastic bass swagger has more balls and conviction than anything the Spree have recorded. Live favourite 'Wake Up' also has an abundance of energy rooted in its spirited choral nature before it mutates into a bouncy coda over which Win gleefully, but appropriately wails "You better look out below!"

The album closes with 'In The Backseat' which encompasses the entire crux of 'Funeral'. "I like the peace in the backseat/I don't have to drive/I don't have to speak" sings Régine eschewing responsibility for safety and detachment. As the song graduates to it's climax, her voice growing ever more siren-like with a Bjork quality, events force her into acceptance - "Alice died in the night/I've been learning to drive/I've been learning to drive all my life." The strings grow restless, the drums pound the guitars grow louder. Like 'Funeral' as a whole, it's empowering and hopeful and euphoric all at once. It says everything there is to say about mortality and it does it in 10 tracks.

Casey Rea, Dusted, October 11th, 2004

Canada's virtues as a haven for creative minds are being extolled by indie-scenesters throughout North America, and the mythologization of the “Canadian aesthetic” is now fully underway. It's a process that sometimes undermines objectivity in evaluating groups from the country – and can often overshadow a band's merits as well as its faults. Hailing from Montreal, the Arcade Fire’s Merge Records debut is impressive, but an excess of praise has been heaped upon the band by tastemakers looking to chew up and spit out the next underground icon.

Funeral, the band's follow-up to their revelatory DIY debut, documents a passionate and thoughtful indie-rock band whose perspectives and convictions are bolstered by their everyday lives. Win Butler and Régine Chassagne are married, Butler’s brother Will joined in 2003, and the title is unfortunately apt: While recording, the band lost family members and loved ones – resulting in an album's worth of grief counseling.

"Crown of Love" is a yearning pop ballad, as good as any post-Beatles work by John Lennon. If anything showcases the band's dynamic, it's this cut. Its '50s progression and plaintive cry for forgiveness places the song somewhere between mawkish and celestial; a middle ground of perseverance through turmoil.

There’s a ragged winsomeness in the band’s ’80s-tinged sound, full of open-ended instrumentation and hazy production, and not without its drawbacks. "Neighborhood #2” suffers from the common affliction of jagged, pointy guitars going through the downstroke motions – when will this trend stop? “Neighborhood 4” is no beacon of originality, either; it apes the worst of Modest Mouse, but redeems itself with a clever guitar figure and expressive lyrics.

Although most of the songs on Funeral deal with personal tragedy and loss, the Arcade Fire don’t sound maudlin; Win Butler’s voice gives the songs an awkward lilt that's cheery even on the most delicate numbers. Somewhere between David Byrne and Tom Verlaine, he strains for notes and usually hits ’em, but his reedy bellows are a just a short step away from annoying. Passionate delivery gets him through, however, and with each listen, what was once grating becomes as comfortable as a pair of old slippers.

Chassagne is a compelling vocalist, and her work in the tune “Haiti” is childlike and serene. Her soft coos aren’t dissimilar to Björk, but drama-club histrionics occasionally bring her closer to Kate Bush territory. She’s a fine musical match for her husband, however, and part of the Arcade Fire’s grace is in the contrasting yet complementary styles the two bring to the band. The interplay with violinist Sarah Neufeld is also lovely; her playing is never ostentatious, and it heightens the emotional impact of the songs.

With such moments of splendor, it’s sad to hear the band constantly devolving into point-and-click DFA-style dance beats. This territory has been well-mined, and the Arcade Fire possess enough vision to discard stale posturing. There is simply too much creative promise in this group to squander. The song “Wake Up” is an ugly beauty reminiscent of Camper Van Beethoven, and delivers a soaring chorus pushing Chassagne’s voice to the fore. The grandiose arrangement soldiers forward, before breaking into a tragic-comic coda with saloon piano plucking the strings of heartbreak. On this number, the group again hits all the right points – optimism in the face of tragedy, and boogie in the heart of the dirge.

If there were more songs like this on the disc, Funeral would be a great album. Marred by indie-rock clichés and occasional over-effort, it remains frustrating.

E Online, September 14th, 2004

In a short few months, this Montreal band has successfully accomplished what took Modest Mouse a lifetime to achieve: the buzz of a thousand bees. It's easy to see why. The sextet's debut album, written and recorded after the deaths of several close friends and relatives is an emotionally wracked masterpiece, drawing on immaculate influences like the Pixies and Talking Heads while sounding distinctly original. "Neighborhood No. 2" is a dreamy, accordion-laced work of beauty combining the shouty vocals of frontman Win Butler and wife Chassagne, while "Une Annee Sans Lumiere" is a spastic, psychedelic delight. Forget George W., this is the real reason to move to Canada.

Dave Simpson, The Guardian, Friday February 25th, 2005

While every third British band mines 1979-80 post-punk, Arcade Fire, from Canada, have stolen a march by investigating the US "no wave" of the same period.
Their masterstroke has been to invest this ironic, cool music with raw emotion. Marriages collapsed and friends died around them while they made Funeral, but grief has produced the giddy energy of a wake. The stunning Laika hits a higher gear every 20 seconds.Everything is delivered in Flaming Lips cinemascope, which would mean nothing without lyrics to melt the heart. "Children don't grow up, our bodies get bigger and our minds get torn up," cries Win Butler against Wake Up's giant rock riff.

One of the year's best already, by a mile.

Tyler Wilcox, Junk Media, September 14th, 2004

The Arcade Fire's debut full-length doesn't really sound like a debut. Funeral, released today, is a fully-formed statement of purpose. It doesn't present a band finding its feet, it shows them leaping forth with an instantly recognizable sound. And it's certainly not lacking in ambition, as the band ably shifts from twitchy, post punk workouts into baroque string interludes.

The Arcade Fire hail from Montreal, Quebec, proving that, for whatever reason, the Canucks are turning out the most imaginative indie rock these days. Not that the band is in any real way comparable to other recent Canadian exports, such as the New Pornographers or The Unicorns. If you're looking for analogues, think a less-cerebral Talking Heads, with a dash of the Pixies' explosiveness thrown in for good measure. There's also an anthemic quality to several of the songs, (especially the rousing "Wake Up"), that places the band in another league altogether. Singer-guitarist Win Butler's edgy vocals manage to sound simultaneously tortured and playful. At times he's yelping madly like Black Francis, at others he's a dead ringer for New Order's Bernard Sumner. His lyrical subject matter is often dark, but with the band slamming joyously away behind him, the album never gets bogged down.

Like The Fiery Furnaces' Gallowsbird Park, or Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights, Funeral is a debut record that simply refuses to be ignored. It's not perfect - not quite anyway. But it's thrilling to hear a new band so bursting at the seams with talent.

Alan Shulman, No Ripcord Magazine, January 26th, 2005

Arnold Schoenberg, the great pioneer of the classical avant garde, once said that there was still plenty of great music left to be written in C major. I think we can also conclude that there’s still plenty of inspiration left to be milked from the traditional rock form; two guitars, bass, drums, a pounding beat and a baroque keyboard flourish now and again. It must be true since Arcade Fire just proved it. Their new album, Funeral, is so fresh and exciting it’s hard to believe they are operating in an old and potentially stale form. Not only are the songs uniformly excellent, they also show a mastery of the art of controlled dynamics, of tension and release, that most young bands ignore to pursue the catharsis of sustained intensity. But as any woman will tell you, intensity is great, young chap, but you’ve got to build up to it. Arcade Fire sticks to the basics and keeps it simple. There is not a wasted or superfluous moment on this record. At over 48 minutes that’s, uh, not too shabby.

The album starts out on a high note with Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), a tale of childhood escape and liberation which turns out to be a recurring motif on Funeral. A twinkling, heavily reverbed piano, quickly joined by a thumping bass drum heartbeat, builds to a rapturous full band workout with Win Butler wailing about forgetting the “names we used to know”. This highlight is followed quickly by four more. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) channels the Edge’s stuttering guitar, while Une Annee Sans Lumiere transitions to a herky-jerky epilogue; a device they use in several songs to great effect. Just when this level of consistent excellence seems like it’s going to get boring, abruptly, the album hits an astounding peak.

A chugging guitar rallies the awakening troops. A resolute beat joins in and soon the armies are chanting along in unison, fists raised high. “Children, wake up” he sings, half command, half plea. The streets fill up with the forgotten, demanding justice. Who could resist this onslaught? This was the music missing from the RNC protest this summer in New York. If they had played it up and down Seventh Avenue that day, its not likely Madison Square Garden would still be standing, and we’d probably all be better off. Then, as the song shifts into its celebratory ending, the protestors would join hands and dance in a circle, rejoicing at the dawn of the new Enlightenment, shouting all at once “you better look out below!”

The rest of the album is great too.

Jeff Gray, Nude As The News,

Hold on to your hats for this shocker: The Arcade Fire's Funeral deals with death. During its recording, frontwoman Regine Chassagne's grandmother passed away, as did the grandfather of her bandmates, the brothers Win and William Butler. So did guitarist Richard Parry's Aunt Betsy. As if that wasn't enough change to deal with, Chassagne and Win Butler, The Arcade Fire' principal songwriters and singers, were married in and among the trips to funerals, wakes, and the recording studio.

You get the point. Important, life-changing, mind-blowing things were happening while the band was committing Funeral to tape, the sort of things that couldn't help but show up in the mix, though they could have surfaced in any number of ways. Funeral could have been a dirge. It could have been a staid requiem for the departed. It could have been, worst of all, a touching testament to the power of the human soul to recover from tragedy. Thankfully, it's none of those.

In the months leading up to this release, The Arcade Fire became the darlings of the indie rock scene and beyond, even warranting a mention in the New York Times and creating a massive line-out-the-door buzz at CMJ's New Music Marathon. Luckily, the hype is deserved. Funeral is an original-sounding masterwork of multi-instrumental pop, channeling fear and humor and sheer, straightforward heartfeltness into something that's more than the sum of its considerable parts.

The album is set in an imaginary neighborhood protected by warmth and parents and comfortable bedrooms, a neighborhood that's failing to keep the big bad world outside. The first track, "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" is a true keeper. It's a reminder that when you're a kid, there's nothing more frightening than seeing your parents cry, and then here we are, kids again, huddling together for warmth: "And if my parents are crying / then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours / You climb out the chimney / and meet me in the middle of town."

The song isn't meek and infantile, though: it's an adolescent anthem taken to heart-rending peaks by an incessant bassline and Win Butler's high-pitched vocals, a song that rails at its impotence to bring back or even remember the dead, and yet takes solace in the very act of railing.

"Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" gets back into the more familiar grief territory of guilt and recrimination with a harsher tone and lyrics harsher still. Laika is the name of the Soviet dog sent into space with Sputnik, a sacrifice to science and the greater good. It's hard not to cringe when the older brother in the song screams, "Our mother shoulda just named you Laika!"

From there, Funeral settles into quieter, folkier tunes like the Rubber Soul-y "Une Annee Sans Lumiere" and "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)," which turns into a nice lullaby after a string-section opening. Each would be more memorable on less memorable albums. Each can be interpreted as a reaction to death and the loss of innocence, but not so overtly that Funeral seems depressing or monotonous. There's too much variety for that, too much energy, too many interesting turns at the keys or the strings or with the lyrics.

Funeral reaches another peak with "Rebellion (Lies)," a driving rocker that channels U2 in their youngest, most exciting, and sweatiest moments on stage -- though in this U2, The Edge plays violin. Don't go to sleep, it warns, and don't listen to the people insisting you should you not spend your nights inert: "People say that you'll die / faster than without water / but we know it's just a lie / scare your son, scare your daughter." It's a song that implores you to get up and bop around. It doesn't promise to make you feel any better so much as it promises that no matter what, there will still be music and noise to rail against.

The album's closer is "In The Backseat," the only song dominated by Chassagne's vocals. Now it's her chance to wail, and wail she does, though she and her bandmates make it work as the song builds from a tiny peep to a punishing crescendo and then drops back down to quiet plucking. "I like the peace / in the backseat / I don't have to drive / I don't have to speak," she sings, and then, "I've been learning to drive my whole life." This is grief, this is resignation, this is feeling small because that's what its words mean; to the listener, though, the lucky fool without a vast reservoir of grief at hand, it's simply a vein of raw emotion, a livewire electric to the touch, offered up without expectation of what might be made of it.

Noel Murray, The Onion (A.V. Club), September 20th, 2004

Montreal art-rock collective The Arcade Fire creates a full-on song cycle on its debut album, Funeral, which recasts the group's biography as a quaint historical document. Percussionist-vocalist Régine Chassagne details her girlhood exile from her homeland in "Haiti," while on scattered tracks, Texas-born bandleader Win Butler refers to his adjustment to the Canadian cold. Throughout the first half of Funeral, on four songs called "Neighborhood" and their entr'acte "Une Année Sans Lumière," The Arcade Fire positions its members as a family of adventurers, braving the elements and inevitable mortality to convey a message about how wondrous life can be.

As a backdrop, the band generates whirling guitar-pop atmosphere on the same continuum as Neutral Milk Hotel, Radiohead, and The Shins, but not precisely like any of them. On "Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)," The Arcade Fire matches a tribal beat to clipped rhythmic guitar, overlaid with gently swaying accordion and periodic cacophonous blasts. Meanwhile, Butler shouts myth through a megaphone, bellowing lines like "Our older brother bit by a vampire / For a year we caught his tears in a cup" in a blankly jittery voice that recalls David Byrne's. The succeeding one-two of "Une Année Sans Lumière" and "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" bounces from music-box lullaby to art-disco to convey the beauty and terrible fragility of a storm's aftermath.

Funeral's layering of sound and wide-eyed posing can be overly dense, and though the band utilizes nice melodies and lively arrangements, the nostalgia-steeped-indie-rock-orchestra pool was pretty much drained before The Arcade Fire dove in. Still, the style attracts new practitioners because it allows ambitious musicians to craft small, personal worlds packed with drama. The Arcade Fire's version may be common, but it's anything but humdrum.

David Moore, Pitchfork Media, September 13th, 2004

How did we get here?

Ours is a generation overwhelmed by frustration, unrest, dread, and tragedy. Fear is wholly pervasive in American society, but we manage nonetheless to build our defenses in subtle ways-- we scoff at arbitrary, color-coded "threat" levels; we receive our information from comedians and laugh at politicians. Upon the turn of the 21st century, we have come to know our isolation well. Our self-imposed solitude renders us politically and spiritually inert, but rather than take steps to heal our emotional and existential wounds, we have chosen to revel in them. We consume the affected martyrdom of our purported idols and spit it back in mocking defiance. We forget that "emo" was once derived from emotion, and that in our buying and selling of personal pain, or the cynical approximation of it, we feel nothing.

We are not the first, or the last, to be confronted with this dilemma. David Byrne famously asked a variation on the question that opens this review, and in doing so suggested a type of universal disaffection synonymous with drowning. And so The Arcade Fire asks the question again, but with a crucial distinction: The pain of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the enigmatic husband-and-wife songwriting force behind the band, is not merely metaphorical, nor is it defeatist. They tread water in Byrne's ambivalence because they have known real, blinding pain, and they have overcome it in a way that is both tangible and accessible. Their search for salvation in the midst of real chaos is ours; their eventual catharsis is part of our continual enlightenment.

The years leading up to the recording of Funeral were marked with death. Chassagne's grandmother passed away in June of 2003, Butler's grandfather in March of 2004, and bandmate Richard Parry's aunt the following month. These songs demonstrate a collective subliminal recognition of the powerful but oddly distanced pain that follows the death of an aging loved one. Funeral evokes sickness and death, but also understanding and renewal; childlike mystification, but also the impending coldness of maturity. The recurring motif of a non-specific "neighborhood" suggests the supportive bonds of family and community, but most of its lyrical imagery is overpoweringly desolate.

"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" is a sumptuously theatrical opener-- the gentle hum of an organ, undulating strings, and repetition of a simple piano figure suggest the discreet unveiling of an epic. Butler, in a bold voice that wavers with the force of raw, unspoken emotion, introduces his neighborhood. The scene is tragic: As a young man's parents weep in the next room, he secretly escapes to meet his girlfriend in the town square, where they naively plan an "adult" future that, in the haze of adolescence, is barely comprehensible to them. Their only respite from their shared uncertainty and remoteness exists in the memories of friends and parents.

The following songs draw upon the tone and sentiment of "Tunnels" as an abstract mission statement. The conventionally rock-oriented "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" is a second-hand account of one individual's struggle to overcome an introverted sense of suicidal desperation. The lyrics superficially suggest a theme of middle-class alienation, but avoid literal allusion to a suburban wasteland-- one defining characteristic of the album, in fact, is the all-encompassing scope of its conceptual neighborhoods. The urban clatter of Butler's adopted hometown of Montreal can be felt in the foreboding streetlights and shadows of "Une Annee Sans Lumiere", while Chassagne's evocative illustration of her homeland (on "Haiti", the country her parents fled in the 1960s) is both distantly exotic and starkly violent, perfectly evoking a nation in turmoil.

"Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" is a shimmering, audacious anthem that combines a driving pop beat, ominous guitar assault, and sprightly glockenspiel decoration into a passionate, fist-pumping album manifesto. The fluidity of the song's construction is mesmerizing, and the cohesion of Butler's poignant assertion of exasperation ("I went out into the night/ I went out to pick a fight with anyone") and his emotional call to arms ("The power's out in the heart of man/ Take it from your heart/ Put it in your hand"), distinguishes the song as the album's towering centerpiece.

Even in its darkest moments, Funeral exudes an empowering positivity. Slow-burning ballad "Crown of Love" is an expression of lovesick guilt that perpetually crescendos until the track unexpectedly explodes into a dance section, still soaked in the melodrama of weeping strings; the song's psychological despair gives way to a purely physical catharsis. The anthemic momentum of "Rebellion (Lies)" counterbalances Butler's plaintive appeal for survival at death's door, and there is liberation in his admittance of life's inevitable transience. "In the Backseat" explores a common phenomenon-- a love of backseat window-gazing, inextricably linked to an intense fear of driving-- that ultimately suggests a conclusive optimism through ongoing self-examination. "I've been learning to drive my whole life," Chassagne sings, as the album's acoustic majesty finally recedes and relinquishes.

So long as we're unable or unwilling to fully recognize the healing aspect of embracing honest emotion in popular music, we will always approach the sincerity of an album like Funeral from a clinical distance. Still, that it's so easy to embrace this album's operatic proclamation of love and redemption speaks to the scope of The Arcade Fire's vision. It's taken perhaps too long for us to reach this point where an album is at last capable of completely and successfully restoring the tainted phrase "emotional" to its true origin. Dissecting how we got here now seems unimportant. It's simply comforting to know that we finally have arrived.

Andy Barding, Playlouder, January 27th, 2005

You've heard the rumblings from the commonwealth, you've more than likely downloaded the record already (naughty bleeders) and you're in a state of anxious excitement like me. Maybe you've got friends in Canada who've seen them already; you've certainly read about them - probably argued the toss about them - on discussion boards the worldwide-interweb over. If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll have a ticket for their easily sold-out London show in March.

Arcade Fire as an event is imminent and, clearly, it's time to stop pussyfooting around. They could do without the responsibility, I'm sure - but I for one am pinning a lot of hopes and dreams on our cousins with the shared queen. I demand a lot from my music and I expect Arcade Fire to change my life. By summer 2005, in fact, I expect likely lads singing about skag and stupidity to be a figment of embarrassing memory.

That's not too tall an order. Arcade Fire's debut album cuts an astonishing dash. Vast, landscape-levelling sounds pulsate from its all-knowing brain. Precision-positioned violins scream blue murder over a soothing guitar, piano and vocal bedrock to produce a sound that is at once highly familiar (Bunnymen, New Order, Bowie, Suicide, Talking Heads, British Sea Power, blah blah blah) yet also utterly surprising, exciting and original. Chants and associated eerie oriental vocal antics, in both English and French, give this wonderful record a plausibly religious, possibly shamanic feel. The stuff of magic.

Onto this rich canvas are painted curious little ideas and images, of which the 'Neighborhood' four-part segment (oh yes, you can throw the traditional track one, track two format out of the window right now) is the most pronounced. These tales of family ties, family loss, deep memory, time-travel, catastrophe, astral flight and the 'escape' gene will shatter your heart one second; swell it with bravery and pride the next.

What an imagination! Chief fire officer Win Butler's grown-up but childlike tales are weird, dreamlike exercises that have no peer in modern music. A snowstorm engulfs the town and memories fade through eons to zilch in 'Neighborhood 1 (Tunnels)', a vampiric brother seeks a brave new life by destroying family photos while his tears are collected in a cup during 'Neighborhood 2 (Laika)'. Icicles grow over the hands and eyes of parents in 'Neighborhood 3 (Power Cut)' and the planet is plunged into desperate darkness.

Then there's 'Wake Up', a wavering call for action to children, powered by a tambourine-led beat. It covers the passing of the age, the betrayal of memory and the disastrous pursuit of man. "We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms," shrieks Win. "Turning every good thing to rust."

The record officially ends with sadness and hope, memory and loss, bravery and passion - all combined for listening pleasure in the wonderfully haunting 'In The Backseat'. Life is a journey, friends, and we're all still learning to drive.

Except, it doesn't really end there, you know. The last track, I find, is one of my own making. It's not on the CD - it begins moments after the plastic has stopped spinning around. It's a moment of blessed silence, and you're going to need it if the power and majesty of this thing is to sink in sufficiently. The last 'track', then, is your own heart, your own breath and your own brain ticking, clicking and seething away.

What an album.

Zeth Lundy, Pop Matters, September 16th, 2004

The Arcade Fire coalesced in Montreal, Quebec, and recorded its debut album Funeral during one of that city's arduous winters. Band members migrated to the Canadian metropolis from various parts of North America, and this idea of displacement and subsequent formation speaks volumes of the record's sprawling canvas. There are no less than 15 musicians contributing aural textures to Funeral's palette, including its spousal centerpiece Win Butler and Régine Chassagne; accordions, xylophones, harps, and lots of strings lavishly shade the edges of the band's auspicious sound.

Funeral is a truly eccentric rock record: bizarre at turns and recognizable elsewhere, equally beautiful and harrowing, theatrical and sincere, defying categorization while attempting to create new genres. At times, the album's total disregard of formula and expectation is positively thrilling, and other times it's bogged down by ambition. But where execution falters, intrigue prevails, and the Arcade Fire ultimately succeeds by keeping the listener guessing as to what lies around the next corner of each proceeding track.

Butler and Chassagne tell tales in the shadow of a very specific neighborhood, one that blends nightmares, fantasies, and oblique visions into its reality. The opening track "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" escalates slowly like the Pixies covering the Velvet Underground, riding a great (and soothingly repetitive) undercurrent chord change. "If my parents are crying / Then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours," Butler sings in his warbling, expressive voice that simultaneously echoes Michael Stipe and a higher-pitched David Byrne, adding, "Purify the colors, purify my mind / And spread the ashes of the colors over this heart of mine".

The narrative arc of Funeral could be explained as wiser childhoods relived through the eyes of adults. "Children wake up / Hold your mistake up / Before they turn the summer into dust," Butler pleads in "Wake Up", which sounds like a more edgy Polyphonic Spree. A choir of voices, harp, and strings all wildly fluctuate around a dirty guitar's one insistent chord. Butler goes on to lament innocence lost: "Somethin' filled up my heart with nothin' / Someone told me not to cry / But now that I'm older, my heart's colder / And I can see that it's a lie". In "Rebellion", which apes Phil Spector with a steady one-key piano bang and string section march, Butler speaks to unlearning what you're taught to believe in adolescence: "Sleeping in is giving in, so lift those heavy eyelids / People say that you'll die faster than without water / But we know it's just a lie / Scare your songs and scare your daughter".

Chassagne contributes to Funeral's most divine moments. "Haiti", an ode to her native country's tumultuous past, boasts organic acoustics and a procession-leading bass line. Alternating between French and English, Chassagne's frail voice attempts to find a kind of redemptive closure among the blossoming melodies: "Haiti, mon pays / Wounded mother I'll never see / Ma famille set me free". The lilting, wavelike melody of "Une Année sans Lumière" (in which Chassagne sings lead with Butler) helps to paint an enchanting, almost romantic disposition. The two sing of (as the title makes reference) a year without light, noting that "the streetlights all burnt out" and adding: "Hey, my eyes are shooting sparks / La nuit mes yeux t'éclairent (at night my eyes are afire)". The couple often speak of finding light within perpetual darkness, even if that discovery is more figurative than it is palpably real.

"Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)" is perhaps the best encapsulation of all that is the Arcade Fire. The song sounds like Crispin Glover leading Interpol through uncharted territory, which includes a wheezing accordion and boisterous string section. The punky, distorted vocal delivery in the verses gives way to the chorus' strong melody, the band exploits exotic sounds via its metallic skeleton crunch, and the lyrics feel personal, yet unwieldy. "Our mother shoulda just named you Laika," Butler hollers in his fuzzy croon. "It's for your own good / It's for the neighborhood / Our older brother bit by a vampire / For a year we caught his tears in a cup / And now we're gonna make him drink it up." The Arcade Fire speaks to the incoherent phenomena imbedded in adolescents, validating an experience too often negated and begrudged by adulthood. It's a difficult idea to create music around, and even more difficult to write about, so your best bet is to check out Funeral for yourself. Chances are you'll be oddly moved, compulsively intrigued, and perhaps even peer into the darker cavities of your memory where virtuous perceptions remain untainted.

Jenny Eliscu, Rolling Stone, December 9th, 2004

The liner notes to this exceptional debut from the Arcade Fire refer to the recent deaths of several family members -- which explains why Funeral aches with elegiac intensity. Chilly imagery from this indie-rock band's native Montreal dominates the album: Characters stumble through the snow, shivering, to meet between their houses while their "parents are crying." "Crown of Love" builds from a mournful waltz to a bustle of choppy violin strokes as singer Win Butler pleads, "If you still want me/Please forgive me." Amid all the loss and breakups, the Arcade Fire manage to also be strangely joyous: Songs such as "Wake Up," which features a choir of voices and a fierce rhythmic stomp, burst with catharsis. The band could have gone for a less direct title, but even then it would have been crystal clear: Funeral captures the agony and even ecstasy of surviving death all around you.

Laurence Station, Shaking Through.net, September 30th, 2004

Funeral is a big-hearted record, gushing with emotion. Montreal-based quintet The Arcade Fire lists nine people (friends and family members) who have passed away, hence the ceremonial title of the group's debut. The ten tracks offered here don't explicitly deal with loss, but are obviously greatly informed by it. "Une Année Sans Lumière" mentions burnt-out streetlights (one for every dear soul lost, presumably); "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" concerns a power outage. But The Arcade Fire isn't wallowing in self-pity or reflecting a bereaved, paralytic state. If anything, Funeral is bursting with energy (albeit in a nervy, Talking Heads sort of way). Lead vocalist Win Butler has a hybridized vocal style reminiscent of David Byrne or Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart, and he's at his best on the big, sweeping orchestral pieces ("Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" and the sway-croon pleading of "Crown Of Love"). The best moments belong to Régine Chassagne, however. She brings an evocative sense of place to "Haïti," which features a sunny, roiling beat and intriguingly dark lyrics ("In the forest we are hiding / Unmarked graves where flowers grow") and the closing, fragile, "In the Backseat," which comes closest to providing an elegy for the dead. Lyrically, the band's not quite there yet, exhibit A being "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)" and the clunky couplet: "My eyes are covered by the hands of my unborn kids / But my heart keeps watchin' through the skin of my eyelids." But in terms of sheer ambition -- and the realization that if you're going to use strings, you might as well go completely over the top with them -- The Arcade Fire is a promising, unapologetically melodramatic sure bet.

Splendid Magazine

Sarah Zachrich, Splendid Magazine, November 8th, 2004

Given that The Arcade Fire have made the New York Times and all, chances are you're sick of Funeral and have already moved on to fall in love with your next quirky, intelligent husband-and-wife (or brother-and-sister)-based band. But if you haven't heard this record, why the hell not? Go! Buy it! I'll wait.
When (like this one) a band's debut full-length is buoyed by mucho hype-o, the backlash tends to come when audiences realize that these people aren't the shining geniuses they were thought to be (and no matter how jaded you are, certain bands do still inspire that hero worship) -- just a bunch of musicians who happen to have made a good record and enjoyed the luxury of getting it promoted the right way at the right time. Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the married nucleus of The Arcade Fire, have undoubtedly benefited from a certain amount of luck. They've had good help as well, in the form of an extensive list of contributors and fellow band members Richard Parry, Tim Kingsbury and Win's brother Will.

Listening to Funeral takes a bit of patience. With most of the songs, the payoff doesn't come right away; in some cases, it sneaks up on you after several spins. With an enclosed programme of players and lyrics and recurring themes alluding to an ongoing story, the record unabashedly proclaims its theatricality even before you've heard a note. "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" fades in like a soundtrack piece, crescendoing into orchestral glory as Win Butler sings in a honeyed but slightly tremulous warble. "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" follows the initial burst of bombast with a sparser intro of lightly tapped toms, sleigh bells and accordion. Butler's voice comes slightly distorted and seemingly from a great distance, relating how "Alexander, our older brother / Set out for a great adventure / He tore our images out of his pictures / He scratched our names out of all his letters." One of Funeral's many strengths is Butler and Chassagne's evocative lyrics; Régine's lullaby on album closer "In the Backseat" ("I like the peace / In the backseat / I don't have to drive / I don't have to speak") reminds us not only of how nice it is to watch scenery unfurl on the freeway, but of the sense of security we lose once we're no longer children cozily ensconced in the family station wagon.

Family plays a role in Funeral -- not least in its naming, which was inspired by the deaths of several of the band members' relatives -- but unsurprisingly, it's a very duet-centric record. The songs' protagonists usually seem to be addressing one other person, inviting him or her into their slightly skewed but generally positive world. Despite the apparent death theme, Funeral is very life-affirming. In "Rebellion (Lies)", Win exhorts his listeners, "Sleep is giving in, no matter what the time is / Sleep is giving in / So lift those heavy eyelids" as if to say that life is short -- so live like you're going to die tomorrow, and love like you've never been hurt.

Whether the Arcade Fire's indie-cred star will continue to rise depends on a variety of factors, most of them far out of the band's control. However, their "feeling music for thinkers" aesthetic should serve them well; music is, after all, primarily an emotional buzz, and who wants to hear a million trite love songs? I have a hunch that Funeral is just the beginning of a beautiful career.

Josh Drimmer, Stylus Magazine, September 14th, 2004

he Arcade Fire make music the way Detroit Tigers pitcher Mark “The Bird” Fidrych played baseball: in an ecstatic style all their own. When a song in Funeral starts out doing nothing for you, be patient, and eventually a devastating chord or crescendo will hit you. When a song grabs you from the start, that’s a guarantee it will also send you in loop-de-loops and leave you gasping. The ten songs of loud and beautiful orchestral pop contained in the Montreal sextet’s label debut should make them bigger than French toast, but is unlikely to inspire followers to their overpowering yet impeccably constructed sound. The reason: it’s hard to imagine many other bands talented enough to even poorly imitate this.

Frontman Win Butler’s lyrics rarely bother to rhyme, allowing their bizarre but always sincere sentiments to reach the ear even more directly. On one song (vampire adventure tale “Neighborhood #2 [Laika]”) he sounds a bit like David Byrne, but Butler resembles Byrne more in how singular and commanding his voice is than anything; like Byrne, what Butler does is something different and often something more than singing. Opener “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” is the sort of potentially-ridiculous-turned-fantastic work that only this voice and this band could sell, a story of love surviving through a new ice age, even as the lovers are losing language itself: “then we tried to name our babies/ But we forgot all the names that / The names we used to know!”

But although Butler and Regine Chassagne, playing six instruments each, may be the twin creative engines of the Arcade Fire, this is a big band: fifteen musicians are credited, including four that appear exclusively on “Wake Up,” a song that may be more overpowering than the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize???” Thus, it comes as no surprise that they sound best at their most bombastic, and Funeral succeeds in creating the sheer size of this sound where the Fire’s self-titled, self-released debut sometimes faltered, the cannonball difference between chamber music and “The 1812 Overture”.

“Neighborhood #3 (Power Out),” for example, starts with the crashing drums and guitar of something from The Cure’s Disintegration, but the manic energy of the tune comes from an endlessly repeated three-note xylophone riff—if anything played on a xylophone can be called a riff. “Crown Of Love” is a good piece of Bobby Darin-like 50s prom music, but when the full string arrangements come through at full volume, the song goes over the top into true poignancy. This full an orchestra could sound like a pretentious and overly mannered move, but the Arcade Fire are the rarest of rock creations: good musicians that sound like they’re really having fun.

The Arcade Fire chose the title Funeral more to honor the recent loss of several family members than to denote any concept, but strangely enough, the album is as celebratory, emotionally rich and life-affirming as a good funeral should be, but never is. Of course, this isn’t the end, but merely the beginning of a brand new thing. Children, wake up: the Arcade Fire is here to rouse you from your slumbers, and this September 14th is a bright new day.

Wyatt, Tiny Mix Tapes

"Time keeps creepin' through the neighborhood, killing old folks, wakin' up babies just like we knew it would..."

I have my hands up in the air. I'm part of the choir and I'm ready to do what the Arcade Fire tells me to. I've been captured and smitten. A leap of faith is not required here. Funeral is like nothing you've heard before, and altogether familiar. Funeral comforts and cares, marches and dares, and towers over us with its anthemic choruses and orchestral arrangements.

It's been written that the members of The Arcade Fire did not all grow up listening to the same ten bands. Funeral is the ultimate companion/support piece to that statement. You could spend all day picking out potential influences while listening to Funeral; Motown, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Sugarcubes, New Order, The Pixies, The Talking Heads, and on and on. Does it really matter though? Does that ever really matter? I guess what we can note is that they made fine choices and we reap the rewards.

As some bands do, The Arcade Fire faced a daunting task in recording their first full-length. They had to balance crafting their own sound and fulfilling the lofty expectations created by their own stellar live rep. Many times, a studio release by a band with a strong live reputation can tend to sag under that weight of expectation. Funeral absolutely captures the passion and intensity of their live show. The band poured unlimited emotion into this record and in the process has left themselves vulnerable. This trust creates an amazing experience that a listener can really feel personally invited to. You can sense that something special is happening and somehow you feel a small part of it. You get it like you get the themes on the album of love, loss, birth, death, and family.

Like many classic releases, Funeral strikes a chord deep within and establishes a personal connection. The reason why? Because The Arcade Fire digs tunnels like us, watches pots boil like us, falls asleep in the backseat like us, and loves the bittersweet merry go round of this life -- like us. To top it off, they present all of this accompanied by some of the finest pop music and hooks of the year. And though named how it is, I believe we should celebrate this album in the finest tradition of an Irish Wake. For The Arcade Fire have revealed one of the best albums of the year, hands down.

Brandon Gentry, Trouser Press

In the first half of the '00s, thanks to the Constantines, Unicorns and New Pornographers (to name a few), the international indie rock audience finally began to wake up to the long-thriving Canadian scene. In 2004, Arcade Fire became one of the most warmly received and widely celebrated Montreal acts in some time. Propping up a multi-instrumental approach with driving rhythms and rousing guitars, the band crafts engaging, exciting songs with imagination to spare, mixing a diverse set of styles into a wholly original sound.

Win Butler, grandson of swing-era bandleader and pedal steel virtuoso Alvino Rey, formed the Arcade Fire in 2003 with his brother William, Régine Chassagne (whom Win would eventually marry), Richard Parry and Timothy Kingsbury. By the end of the year, the Arcade Fire had self-released an eponymous seven-song EP. While not as accomplished as the band's later work, it introduces a formidably talented group: augmented by numerous guests, each member handles a range of instrumental duties, mustering banjo, accordion, clarinet, synthesizer, harp, horns, guitars, bass and drums. Win Butler sings with David Byrne’s high-anxiety intensity, while ex-jazz singer Chassagne comes across as exceedingly (or distractingly) Björk-informed, especially on the whimsical, childlike “I’m Sleeping in a Submarine” and “The Woodlands National Anthem.” The driving “No Cars Go” is a clear standout, with martial drums, pulsing bass line and soaring chorus (“Hey! No cars go!”); the simple melody is sustained on accordion and organ. The ringing guitars and tinkling piano of “The Headlights Look Like Diamonds” ride over a clattering, dance-y rhythm section, while the mid-tempo strumming, sparkling bridge and bitter lyrics (“Your father was a pervert / Face down in the dirt”) of “Vampire / Forest Fire” close out the EP in fine style.

Before the band’s first year was out, the Arcade Fire signed to Merge Records and began work on a full-length album, again enlisting a number of guests. The project was haunted by death: the Butlers’ grandfather Rey passed away, as did Chassagne’s grandmother and Parry’s aunt. As a result, the album was titled Funeral. All the same, the Arcade Fire’s first full-length (featuring new permanent member Howard Bilerman on drums and guitar) is an energetic and original statement. “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” fades in with an ascending piano line, a distorted guitar figure snaking between the notes. As Win Butler’s vocals gain in intensity, the drums and bass follow suit, turning the song into a propulsive, pounding shout-along. “Neighborhood #2 (Laika)” merges accordion, chunky guitar and stabbing strings into a bracing rocker as Butler tells the tale of a wandering wayward sibling, shouting the lyrics with a combination of wonder and anger (“If you want somethin’, don’t ask for nothin’ / If you want nothin’, don’t ask for somethin’!”) “Une Année Sans Lumiere” sees Butler and Chassagne singing (partly in French) a gentle, delicate melody, the instruments supporting the lilting vocals; by song’s end, the band is playing at breakneck speed, all slashing guitars and driving drums. “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” employs a rhythm section from the New Order fakebook, the kick and the snare cranking out a metronomic 4/4 while bells chime and a rubbery bass provides substance to one of the album’s finest tracks. The distorted central riff of “Wake Up” serves as a backdrop to the soaring choir of its chorus. Chassagne takes center stage for “Haiti,” a sentimental ballad chronicling her ancestors’ arrival in Canada from the Caribbean; the song’s breezy, tropical feel is enhanced by the gauzy vocals and steel drums. “Lies” is another gem, and possibly the album’s best track: guitars, piano and strings pump out of the speakers with exhilarating urgency. By the time the finale, “In the Backseat,” has faded out, it’s clear that the Arcade Fire has created an album composed in sadness but radiating joy. Essential.

Joe Levy, The Village Voice, January 21st, 2005

In From The Cold

Young indie Canadians make a life together before their own lives can tear them apart

They practice the family and community that they preach and that their fans need.

The story the Arcade Fire tell on Funeral starts in the middle, in mid-sentence, a sign that the story is bigger than the music, began before it, and will continue after it. Maybe it is the middle of the night. Certainly the music seems to have just woken up. It floats in from far away: some strings, then fingers wandering across piano keys, looking for the way, before an electric guitar—distant and buzzing through a wide, empty space—clears the way for Win Butler. He is alone in a world of darkness and winter, talking about what he's seen and how it feels: " . . . and if the snow buries my, my neighborhood/And if my parents are crying, then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours."
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" may be a dream, or it may be the reality of winter in Montreal, where it can snow six months a year, and where underground tunnels connect downtown. As the music heats up, what comes next is part fairy tale, part parable: a girl climbs out her chimney, meets Butler in the center of the city. They let their hair grow long, they live in the snow, their skin gets thick. She is the golden hymn in his head, the song he's been reaching for. They have babies but have forgotten how to name them. Instead, they have only memories, the memories of the bedrooms of those who are gone: parents, friends, the image of those bedrooms in their minds, clear as can be.

Funeral is a remarkable record, hard to hear at first, then hard to stop hearing. It is an indie-rock cause célèbre, fiercely praised, defended, and protected, most visibly by the impassioned bloggers who are transfixed by both the disarming sincerity of the record's artistic ambitions and the septet's wild live shows—neither unusual in indie land—and Funeral's backstory, which is.

In the time leading up to its release, the band members lost two grandparents and an aunt. They found themselves constantly at memorial services, and then they found that their songs were a way to transmute their grief. Funeral returns continually to death—even the album closer, about looking out at the countryside from the backseat of a car—but also to religion, love, babies, kids playing in the snow, and community.

The music—mostly recorded at Hotel2Tango, a proudly analog studio in Montreal's former Jewish ghetto that gave Funeral's songs living, breathing presence—is as emotionally unfettered as it is carefully constructed. It reaches back to '80s bands like the Cure, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Violent Femmes, and Jane's Addiction, who strummed their way through catharsis after catharsis, a sound that has become in recent years a new classicism. The Arcade Fire stretch that sound until it is both older and newer, shading it with the gloom of folk songs and the yowling urgency of indie rock. Arcade Fire songs are often called "operatic," possibly because they are full of old-world touches like violin, viola, accordion, and xylophone, and possibly because they can be oddly decentered, swelling and shifting with an oceanic pulse, spreading out as far as the eye can see, then leaping into furious rock codas at will. The vocal melodies tend toward chants, yelps, and incantations.

As much as the talk about death and bad weather and the darkness being chased away by light that pours out of our eyes, our hearts, our hands, what gives the Arcade Fire their singular charge is that they practice what they preach: family and community. Butler, a former religious-studies major, married singer and multi-instrumentalist Régine Chassagne last August, a month before Funeral was released. Butler's younger brother, Will, plays bass. In a way that every band can, the Arcade Fire provide a community for their fans, who can find in both the album packaging—quaint illustrations that evoke the 19th century—and in lyrics like "there's some spirit I used to know, that's been drowned out by the radio" typical indie invocations of the homespun and the handmade as ways of fighting off alienation. But the Arcade Fire also offer something deeper: an example of how to navigate the complexities, good and bad, that life inevitably throws at you as you get older. Death. Marriage. Children. A way of making a future. Not an easy one. "If the children don't grow up," cries Butler on Funeral's anthemic "Wake Up," "our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up." He sounds so wide open to his pain he could be John Lennon circa Plastic Ono Band, finally acknowledging that his fans were in effect his own kids.

Robert Christgau, The Village Voice, January 31st, 2005

First you notice that the opener really is kinda gorgeous, with its twin-xylophone-echoed piano flourish and all. Then you isolate Win Butler's sob and fantasize about throttling the twit, an immature impulse unmitigated by the lyrics, which are histrionic even for a guy who's just lost a grandparent (or whoever). But if you keep at it till the next song, which tells the story of his runaway older brother getting bitten by a vampire, you begin to admire his resilience—he's retained a sense of the ridiculous, which is more than you can say of most young twits who sing about losing a grandparent (or whoever). And that's how the album goes—too fond of drama, but aware of its small place in the big world, and usually beautiful. N.B.: if you're considering Montreal, which is certainly my favorite Canadian place, the ex-Texans and -Haitian here want to make clear that it's horribly cold.

Adam Webb, Yahoo Music UK (DOT Music), Wednesday March 2nd, 2005

It’s likely to incite reams of journalistic hyperbole, but, fundamentally, The Arcade Fire have recorded a great f*cking album that will piss on most other releases this year. “Funeral” is the sort of perfectly-realised record you’d hope from a band at the top of their game. For a debut release it’s unmatched in recent years. Hearing it is to wake from a black and white slumber and to view the world in widescreen Technicolour.

Recorded in the aftermath of bereavement (“My family tree’s loosing all it’s leaves”) as well as the marriage of the band’s founders Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, these ten incredible songs tackle the ‘big’ issues. Life and death and its crushing inevitability is everywhere. As Butler sings on “Neighbourhood #4 (7 Kettles)”, “Time keeps creepin’ through the neighbourhood, killing old folks, waking babies, just like we knew it would”.

Amid themes of coldness, dark, loss and innocence (the recurring images are of broken pylons, broken parents, lightning bolts and snow) “Funeral” presents a lifetime of dreams and memories. Tracing their own twin existences, Butler recounts his move from Texas to Montreal while Chassagne remembers her family and how they escaped the Haitian dictatorship of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier.

Quite how these Canadians (the band is completed by Richard Parry, Will Butler, Tim Kingsbury and Howard Bilerman) managed to spin such tales of personal intensity into an affecting and coherent whole is what makes this record so special. Like Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds”, it would be easy to view “Funeral” as a sort of genuine song-cycle – a portrayal of the seasonal-like change from adolescence’s cocoon to the hopes and fears of adulthood. “If children don’t grow up, our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up,” croons Butler at one point.

Musically too, it’s ambitious. Calling on a cast of friends (including Godspeed You Black Emperor’s Sophie Trudeau and Thierry Amar) the band alternate between huge baroque showpieces (hair-raising opener “Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels)”, the majestical “Crown Of Love”) and rattling pop songs (“Neighbourhood #2 (Laïka)" and "Rebellion (Lies)”).

There’s shades of the Flaming Lips, Talking Heads and New Order but amidst the scraping violins, chiming xylophones and pianos there’s also a burning flame of originality. An almost desperate urge to communicate. The underlying melancholy is never unbearable because another life-affirming moment is always around the corner. And strangely, like a funeral itself, this is a life-affirming album. A reminder that time is short and transient. That each second is precious.

When Chassagne sings the string-drenched closer “In The Backseat” it sounds like she’s found peace in this miracle. Her torment of death is relieved by an acceptance of who she is, where she’s come from and that where she’s going is unknown. “I’ve been learning to drive. My whole life, I’ve been learning. Oh Norah!” It’s arguably the most beautiful moment of the album.

We’re all of us just lucky to be alive to hear it.

© Frank Steven Groen