Arcade Fire Early Demo

If there is anyone else out there who feels that one classic album (Funeral) and one great album (Neon Bible) and on maybe not so great EP is enough Arcade Fire, do check out these early demo's from 2001. Some of the songs are really good, others rather mediocre, as you would expect from a band like Arcade Fire.

Apparently Mr. Butler went through a C.S. Lewis period at some point, too:

Oh my God, a winter for a year
Oh my God, a winter for a year
And I cleaned out the back of my wardrobe for a year
Jackets never turn into branches
Not while you're not here
Winter for a Year

More on Arcade Fire

Somebody left a link to this article in a comment to my post on Neon Bible. It's an article that explores some of the biblical language on the album, some of it very interesting, some of it a bit far-fetched... Turns out Win Butler is a former theology student, which explains a lot of things. Like these quotes:

I wrote that song after our first headlining tour of the States....It was the first time in my life that I felt like I was visiting my own country as some sort of outsider. I had lived in Montreal for a few years at that point, but I didn't realize that I had really made it my home until that trip. In theology there is this idea that it is easier to say what God isn't than what God is, and in a way that song is my trying to say everything about my country that is not what makes it great or beautiful. In a way it makes what is great and beautiful and worth fighting to preserve more clear.

and:

A good percentage of rock bands, when they perform it's a totally sexual thing. But I don't think we're that sexual. At least that's not what we're singing about or acting out. On a good night, it's more like the ecstasy of St. Theresa.

Do we know of any other theologians turned rock stars? The last quote is not only a rather good description (check out these clips on YouTube), but rather funny, since, as most of you know, St. Theresa is known for using quite sexual language to describe her ecstatic experiences.

Arcade Fire - Black Mirror

This is just a post to say that the new Arcade Fire is really really good.

Ok the music is a bit samey as the last one, but the lyrics are so marvelous - especially set to this music. I get a very similar feeling as when Radiohead's Hail to the Tief came out: the music just blends in with the way you look at the world and becomes a seamless whole. This is rock music when it is as its best - rather then being an escape from the world it is takes you in deeper into reality, making the things that happen around you even more real.

There is a lot of paranoia on this album (yes the Radiohead link is not just in my head). This is from Keep the Car Running:

If some night I don’t come home
Please don’t think I’ve left you alone
The same place that I must go when they die
You can’t climb across a mountain so high
The same city where I go when I sleep
Can’t swim across a river so deep

They know my name ‘cause I told it to them
But they don’t know where and they don’t know when
It’s coming or when
Is it’s coming? Keep the car running

A lot of the songs deal with the feeling of living in post 9-11 land, where the state distrusts us and feels it needs to monitor us (A feeling very close to me today as dark forces won the elections yesterday...). One of the most beautiful songs is the thoroughly depressing Ocean of noise. But religion is a really big theme, from The Well and the Lighthouse that seems to be about Christ, to (Antichrist Television Blues) that is about, well, anti-Christ, in the form of a parent that exploits his child for fame. In the next song, Windowstill, we get the other perspective, the kid's:

MTV, what have you done to me?
Save my soul, set me free!
Set me free! What have you done to me?
I can't breathe! I can't see!

But the penultimate song, No Cars Go, is really joyful, that seems to suggest a way out from all this paranoia and violence, in the moment "between the click of the light and the start of a dream".

The last song is a chapter of its own. Stong platonic languge, "My body is a cage, but my mind holds the Key". Several possible interpretations for this one. Like in antiquity (as I argue in my dissertation ;) ) the body is a metaphor for all those things that hold us back, in this case, "from dancing with the one I love".

I've listened to the album about ten times now, and, as you see, my impressions are still very sketchy. There is that feeling that there is still a lot more to discover here.