Album Review - Fuck Buttons, "Tarot Sport"

It's been way too long since I've done one of these, and I've heard plenty of albums that merited reviews (both good and bad). But last week, I got two albums I'd been highly anticipating, and both are so good as to merit the revival of reviews (though the other will wait a little bit).

At the beginning of this year, I sang high praises for Fuck Buttons' debut album Street Horrrsing, which I now consider one of the two best albums of last year. As I'd put it in January, Street Horrrsing wasn't just amazing; it was that rare breed of album "that you didn't even realize you'd been waiting forever to have until it came out." The original template was simple, yet amazing - danceable electronics, deep bass, beautiful glockenspiel-like chimes, and Come to Daddy style screams. It was one of the more visceral things I've heard in 10 years, and it was, for all appearances, perfect. The fact that iTunes tells me I've listened to it 47 times in the past year (and that doesn't count the times I listened to it in CD format) says plenty.

Thanks to the vagaries of Amazon, I didn't have Tarot Sport, the Buttons' follow-up, until this past Friday, in spite of ordering it before it was released 10 days previous. While I held out from listening to it online, I couldn't help but read some of the reviews. All seemed to like it, but all also said the same thing: "like Street Horrrsing, only different." They particularly highlighted that some of the deep rumbling bass and screams were gone. Given that that was what originally drew me in, I was...not skeptical, but wondering if I'd like Tarot Sport as much. So, do I?

I don't know yet - it's still too soon (47+ listens vs. 6 listens isn't exactly a fair comparison). But it's really, really, really fucking close. It's true - the screams-on-beauty-on-chest-rumbling-bass-line is gone. But it's still a pretty powerful wallop, and it's perhaps more consistent. That's not to say Street Horrrsing is inconsistent - far from it - but personally, the beauty and ferocity of track opener "Sweet Love for Planet Earth," followed by the tribal-ish drums and haunted screams of "Ribs Out" were always so amazing, haunting, stunning, to me, that the rest of the album felt less....I don't know. Fuck Buttons' second album, though, while lacking that "letdown" (though that's hardly a fair or adequate term for their debut), doesn't have that so-called "letdown". In part, it's because nothing is quite as amazing (or, better yet, amazing in the same way) as the opening of Street Horrrsing, but that makes the rest of Tarot Sport that much better.

As for the "the same, only different," aspect, that's also a fair assessment. "The Lisbon Maru" reaches "Sweet Love for Planet Earth's" pulsing, throbbing feel, but with a sense of depth and layering lacking on the opening track of the debut, even while also lacking the screams that gave the debut's opener such a punch. And tracks like "Olympians" and "Flight of the Feathered Serpent" are more dance-able than anything on Street Horrrsing, even while maintaining the simultaneous absolute beauty and sheer aural assault of the first album.

And that's really where the difference between the two albums rest. It's not that Andrew Hung and John Power have gotten lazy, or rested on their laurels, or even fallen into a holding pattern or a sophomore slump. Tarot Sport is worthy of its predecessor, even while changing the soudn somewhat. Where Fuck Buttons' first album made you want to weep at its sheer beauty and ugly force, the second makes you want to nod your head for 60 minutes. In fact, with Tarot Sport, Fuck Buttons have managed to achieve what we often hope so many bands will do with their second album, but what so few manage to do: hold on to everything that made us love the first album, even while transforming and refining the sound so that it's simultaneously familiar and amazingly different. The expectations I had for Hung's and Power's second album were unfair after becoming familiar with Street Horrrsing; the quality of Tarot Sport is so remarkable, my expectations for their third album, while perhaps unfair, are out of this galaxy.

It's just that good.

Desire

I am working from a bar this afternoon (shocking I know). They are playing Bob Dylan's Desire. Hearing this 1977 album all the way through for the first time in a few years reminds me that it is far and away Dylan's most underrated album. It's really very very good. "One More Cup of Coffee for the Road," "Isis," "Sara." These are great songs. I am somewhat less blown away by "Hurricane," but it is certainly the most famous song on the album and was a nice return to his more political days. The album suffers from "Joey" it is true. I mean how many 11 minutes songs about mobsters do we need? None. And at the time I am sure it was disconcerting to hear Dylan use his pen to immortalize thugs. But this disappointment fades over time and really the song is not bad as a song.

How does Desire compare to his other albums. I would probably put it at the lower end of the top 5. It isn't as great as the wonderful mid 60s work of Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home, or Highway 61 Revisited. It isn't as good as Blood on the Tracks either. But I would rate it above the early material, which is more important than it is good or interesting. It's certainly the last good material he had for a long time, as soon after Desire he plunged into his horrible Christian period and then the 80s.

To me Desire and Neil Young's Tonight the Night hold similar spots in my mind, and not just because they both came out in 1977. They aren't considered classic albums by the more casual fans and they don't have a lot of hits. But they are mature albums from great writers who have lived through some rough times and expressing them through their art in extremely satisfying ways.

Album of the Week: Enemy of the Sun

In an effort to write more about music, and more in general, I'm going to start writing about particular album every week(ish). It was fun for a while with the random 10, but it isn't easy to write about a random song. Sometimes, I learn a lot but, mostly, it's too much damn work. Instead, I'm going to stop leaving it up to the fates and write on some of my favorite albums, or just whatever the hell I want to when I write the thing. First up was on my ten favorite rock album list from a while back (one year ago yesterday, as it goes), from my favorite metal band and the best rock show I've ever seen, Neurosis' Enemy of the Sun.

Though they would go way farther with their ideas, Enemy of the Sun is the encapsulation of what Neurosis was and what they would become. After their debut, a very standard-issue West Coast punk album called Pain of Mind, they veered closer to metal until their third album (second in 1992) and first for Alternative Tentacles (though that label reissued the first two and made money off them until Neurosis started their own), Souls at Zero. With it, the band threw all the punk aesthetic out the window for slowed down, long-form metal. Not only was their change in sound like I've never heard elsewhere, I'd never really heard a band sound like that before. A year later, they would expand the sound into what became a mind-blowing experience for me.

Enemy of the Sun opens the way its predecessor does: with a vocal sample. Instead of the confusion at the beginning of the former, however, this sets a very particular mood. "Are you lost?" "Yes" and, with that, the drum and bass kick in a slow, natural rhythm while the questioner goes on about the amazing brevity of life. Steve Von Till's vocals come in slowly while the sample fades out, but the lyrics aren't the typical gloom and doom from much of the metal world. Make no mistake, the words are violent and are belted out in screams, but it is the kind of violence that displays the Earth's power over humanity and how easily we are snuffed by the elements. Fire and water are all over the place, but so is the necessity of the harvest and the ever-repeating ritual of life. There is an empowerment and a spirituality in the lyrics that trumps the darkness.

The words aside, these same ideas make the music even better, which is more important to me in almost any realm. The album is a pure wall of sound, heavy as hell, and oppressive as anything I've ever heard. Through this, unlike most bands that came before them, the music lives and breathes. The rhythms change organically as they move through the waves of guitar and the vocals, one singer in frustrated screams and the other in beastial growls, move in line with the changes in the music. To compound it, their extensive use of traditional acoustic instruments, repeated samples and field recordings that, when added into the huge, sludgy, Sabbath-style riffs, add a dimension to the music that I'd never heard in metal before. Beyond the traditional two guitar, bass, and drums setup, of which they make a tight hardcore band, the addition of strings, bagpipes and didgeridoo at various times give the songs a fully orchestrated feel. The samples add contextual weight that obscure lyrics that are difficult to understand never can. The third track, called "Burning Flesh in Year of Pig," is a recording of a report on the self-immolation of a Buddhist monk during the Vietnam War that is accented by noisy tape loops and isn't pretty. Behind everything, in all the silences and through all the noise, is a constant stream of ambient sounds that is trance-inducing. This culminates into the final song, "Cleanse," a thirty minute epic of primal drums, vocals and noise that has many times driven me to a near hypnotic state, never having realized that eighteen minutes have passed it flows together so naturally.

None of this is done as gimmickry, however. While the eight songs average over nine minutes a piece, none of that excessive amount of time is used for noodling. There are no discernible guitar solos anywhere on the album and, while Neurosis is by far not free from pretension, the time is used to build and release tension, not to impress listeners with their prowess. Enemy of the Sun, and Neurosis in general, is a case where the sum is greater than its parts. The album has a feeling of wholeness, like it emerged naturally from the Earth. While this may all sound like some kind of hippie-metal, let me assure you that the album rocks your ass off, even if it takes a little time to get there.

Enemy of the Sun was a revelation for me. With its roots squarely in metal, it found common ground with folk, electronic, and classical to make something really unique. Over the years, they've expanded their sound, taking it farther away from metal and more toward the folk and ambient sides and into strange new places. At this point, I think that their later albums Times of Grace and Through Silver in Blood are far better albums, but Enemy of the Sun will always have the top place in my heart for how wide it opened my eyes to the possibilities of metal.

Album Review--The Mars Volta "The Bedlam in Goliath"

The Mars Volta came up a while back in Mr. Trend’s post on bad prog album covers. While, admittedly, a lot of those covers were pretty silly and excessive, a lot of the music is really good. Anyway, The Mars Volta was represented on the list by their album “De-loused in the Comatorium,” an excellent debut with one of the best album openings I’ve heard. They’ve moved forward from that and their music has only gotten better over the years. More complicated, for sure, but they’ve stayed fairly true to their original sound, only adding to the thick production without subtracting from it. While they only released “Amputechture” in ‘06, they have come back in early ’08 with their fourth album, “The Bedlam in Goliath.” It doesn’t deviate far from the sound of earlier albums, but the focus on this one has changed again to give another side of this fantastically talented band.

Singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala comes screaming out of the gate in the opener, “Aberinkula,” and this is the tone for the entire album. This is definitely the heaviest all around release from them and, for that reason alone, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. While songwriter and producer Omar Rodriguez-Lopez has often worked in the soft-loud-soft paradigm a lot of modern rock has used, “Bedlam” is loud-loud-loud. There are a few softer bits here and there but, as on “Tourniquet Man,” these parts work more as interludes between harder and more difficult passages. Bixler-Zavala is constantly in his highest register singing his bafflingly obscure lyrics and Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante, now the regular studio stand-in for Rodriguez-Lopez, screams doing the intricate, heavy guitar work that he’s always been most at home with. New drummer Thomas Pridgen does a lot to tie the songs together better than they ever have been. Latin rhythms fused with standard rock drumming fits The Mars Volta like a glove, and they’ve made their most explosive album in “The Bedlam in Goliath.”

There is still a lot of self-indulgence in The Mars Volta, but I’ve never really seen a problem with that. It’s a lot better to me that the pandering, fan-indulgent garbage I’m used to hearing. The fact is that they’ve continued doing exactly what they want, surprisingly staying on Universal Records, and are making rock like nobody else. I don’t think any single one of their best songs is on this album, and it’s not my favorite (yet, at least, the more I listen to each of their records, the more they each grow on me) but, from top to bottom, “The Bedlam in Goliath” is their most consistent work yet. I’m not sure I see where they go from here, but I never have been able to and they’ve always surprised me. Highly recommended and the best album released thus far in 2008.

Album Review: Radiohead, "In Rainbows"

Given the sycophantic nature of so many of Radiohead's fans, I'll be up front: while having listened to the band since my early teens (Pablo Honey being the second CD I ever bought), I thought they were just sort of going through the motions on Hail to the Thief. It's not that I thought they didn't try - I just thought the album fell flat. Radiohead hadn't lost their willingness to experiment, to try things; they just had reached the point where their experiments, their sound, wasn't as interesting. That's not to say Hail to the Thief was bad - some songs ("Where I End and You Begin", "There, There") were absolutely killer. I just thought the album had fallen flat. That was it. The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A were remarkable artistic feats that couldn't be repeated, and I was OK with that. Radiohead had just arrived to the point where their music was good, interesting, but not captivating.

I was wrong.

In Rainbows is as beautiful, unique, and daring as anything Radiohead has done. That becomes clear from the first 3 seconds. Every Radiohead album in the last 10 years has laid out, manifesto-style, how it is different from its predecessors on the first track (see: "Airbag", "Everything in its Right Place", "Packt Like Sardines", and "2+2=5"). In Rainbows is no exception. Immediately, the sole driving drum beat of "15 Step" lets you know that things have changed, before Yorke's voice and the soft, enchanting guitars come in. It isn't a "return to rock" (the stupidest phrase of those who ignorantly complain about each album not being The Bends). Radiohead never eschewed their guitars, even on Kid A. But that isn't the point. What is great here is how they are using their guitars. Where on their earlier material, they were as interested in having accoustic and electric clash and smash into each other ("Just", "Paranoid Android"), now they are interested in creating lilting melodies of electric/accoustic interplay ("Reckoner," "Jigsaw Falling into Place") as well as driving, fast (by Radiohead standards) tunes ("Bodysnatchers") that don't just fit together perfectly; they make you nod your head and want to dance around. The songs don't rock in the traditional sense, but that doesn't matter - they make you want to move, and that's as new and exciting and daring as anything Radiohead has done before.

But they haven't ignored the beauty, either. "All I need" is driven by a calming piano line and atmospherics, with the song developing to a loud-yet-beautiful "trip-through-space" type tone, while Yorke's voice comes in and out. And the strings (which aren't totally new to Radiohead's recent work - just see "How to Completely Disappear") give that beauty a dimension their songs never had before, making the otherwise OK "Faust Arp" (the weakest song on the album, though by no means a throwaway) better than maybe it should have been, weaving in and out with the accoustic guitar; "House of Cards" perfectly joins atmospherics, strings, guitars, and Yorke's falsetto at the end to enter into realms of sonic tranquility and beauty Radiohead hasn't achieved before; yes, "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Pyramid Song" were also examples of this, but they displayed a fragility and fear that is totally absent here. Yorke has never sounded more sure of himself, and the music of the Greenwoods, O'Brien, and Selway back that up.

On top of this, Yorke's voice has never been more beautiful ("Reckoner" and album-closer "Videotape" being just two examples). As the sunny album-title indicates, there simply isn't as much bitterness and anger as there was on Hail to the Thief, nor the isolation and alienation of Kid A and Amnesiac. That's not to say Yorke has totally lost touch with his at-times paranoid disposition; while the first verse of "House of Cards" starts off with Yorke delicately declaring, "I don't want to be your friend, I just want to be your lover", the second starts, "Infrastructure will fall" - a great line that has some political doomsday tones to it even as he simply uses it to describe a love built like said house of cards.

And make no mistake - Radiohead's willingness to explore and experiment with their sound hasn't disappeared. While there may be no "Treefingers" here, they do something just as radical: they actually play with folk conventions, on the amazing "Jigsaw Falling Into Place". And elements of ambient-electronics still fade in and out of the songs; they just don't dominate it anymore. Indeed, In Rainbows smoothly and perfectly melds that electronic sound with their guitars in exactly the way Hail to the Thief didn't.

For those waiting for another OK Computer (or for the hipsters too cool to admit that OK Computer is their best album, another Bends): please stop. It won't happen, nor should it - those albums were great, but repetition would be disappointing, especially from a band that sticks to trying new things like Radiohead does. In Rainbows is as good as anything they've done, offering a blend of song styles they haven't had since Bends. It is not hard to see how their previous work has led up to this point, nor is it difficult to see how In Rainbows is different, and that's what makes it so great: it's both of their earlier work, and something new. And that puts it up there with their best work.

5.5/6 Square Glasses

Album Review: Liars, "Liars"

The Liars’ previous three albums managed the impossible feat of sounding nothing like each other, yet totally like Liars albums. From the rebellious, energetic, manifesto-like They Threw Us All In a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, to They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, the creepy, dissonant concept album about witches in Germany in the 16th century, to last year’s moody, atmospheric, frightening album on creative production and writer’s block, Drum’s Not Dead, they have had a vision unlike anybody else out there in the music world. Given the variation from album to album, with each becoming seemingly more abstract and exploratory (the best way to describe Drum’s Not Dead’s sound is terrifying, ambient guitars, driven by tribal-like drumming), fourth album would lead.

Turns out, it led into one of their most straightforward and melodic albums, and not just from the one-word eponymous title (a vast change from the 13-word debut). Right away, as “Plaster Casts of Everything” comes blaring in, it is immediately clear that this is going to be some of the most straightforward rock Liars have produced thus far. The guitars are at their least-distorted (yet still distorted, sometimes reminiscent of mid-80s Sonic Youth but still sounding totally like the Liars’s own sound, and not a ripoff of somebody else’s sound), and the songs are more compact and drive harder than anything since They Threw Us All in a Trench…. “Cycle Time” offers a first, as the song has a soaring three-chord pulse driving it throughout, providing the most traditionally loud and rocking thing Liars have ever produced. “Freak Out” is as short as most of the songs on They Threw Us All in a Trench and shorter than anything on They Were Wrong… or Drum’s Not Dead, but instead of going through three different tempos and pieces of song in its two and a half minutes, it stays with the same melody and verse-chorus structure throughout.

However, this shouldn’t be understood as Liars doing their best impression of somebody else. The guitars are still distorted, creepy, at times nighmarish. Andrew Angus’s voice still jumps from a quiet whisper to an angry tenor to a high, mournful falsetto from song to song (and sometimes within the same song), and they are still playing with styles ranging from funk to progressive to punk (also sometimes within the same song), all the while making the sound all their own. Additionally, the clanging, dissonant guitars, muffled beats, and strange atmospherics have not disappeared from this album. “Leather Prowler,” still has the tribal drumming and ambient guitar sound, yet it’s more rocking than anything on Drum’s Not Dead. “The Dumb in the Rain” has its drums buried so deeply that what you really hear driving the song is one of the guitars repeatedly hitting the same, chiming, clanging chord, and the closer, “Protection,” uses keyboards to drive it and set up the song’s atmospherics. But the use of items like typewriters to form the basis of the music is gone – this is guitars and drums, and occasional keyboards.

And it’s simply great. Every one of their albums is excellent, but this may be their best work yet. Anyone who has continued to ignore them would be smart to start checking them out, because Liars may be one of the most daring, most interesting, and best bands out there now.

6/6 square glasses

Music Review: Air - "Pocket Symphony"

If there is anybody who suffers from the brilliance of their first album, it is Air. 1998’s Moon Safari was (for the most part rightfully) declared an instant classic, giving a fresh new electronica-based interpretation of lounge-pop. The album was so universally hailed that Air has been forced to deal with the consequences since 1998 that every album by them since then has prompted the question, “Is it as good as Moon Safari?” Thus, the extremely underrated and experimental 10000 Hz Legends was destroyed for not only not being Moon Safari, but for being *gasp* different and experimental! 2004’s Talkie Walkie satisfied some fans, but seemed to be almost too middle of the road.

Fortunately, Air have persevered, and their new album, Pocket Symphony, is far more than satisfying. For those still waiting for another Moon Safari, stop now: this isn’t Moon Safari, there is only one Moon Safari, deal with it. However, Pocket Symphony is brilliant in its own right, for it combines the experimentalism of 10000 Hz Legends and the pedestrian pop-sounds of Talkie Walkie, all while embarking in new directions for Air. Avoiding expectations (and demands) for more of the loung-pop sound that dominated previous albums, this is the most dreamy work they have ever provided. Titles like “Spacemaker” and “Somewhere Between Waking and Sleeping” give an exact sense of the feel of the album. However, unlike previous Air albums (particularly Talkie Walkie), this one has a sense of urgency and emotion. The best example of this is Jarvis Cocker’s (of Pulp) addition, “One Hell of a Party,” which inspiredly sings of a breakup as if it were a hangover. The presence of actual emotions, be it loss (“One Hell of a Party,”) or love that is so unrequited it almost gains a sense of menace (“Redhead Girl”) is a welcome addition to Air’s repetoire. Even the production is more personal, giving a warmth absent in their poppier work.

It is clear that Air’s recent experience working on soundtracks (The Virgin Suicides, as well as workign on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55) has greatly benefitted their evolution. The two Frenchmen successfully create murky, dreamy atmospheres that are full of sounds and feelings that reveal themselves over time, making this perhaps Air’s most rewarding album yet.

5.5 square glasses (out of 6)

Music Review: !!! - "Myth Takes"

As good of an album as !!!'s 2004 LP Louden Up Now is, there were some just complaints. Lyrically, the band seemed more interested in chants and rallies, focusing more on the music than the words. As for that music, when it was good, it was great ("Pardon My Freedom" and the sublime "Me and Rudy Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)," one of the best song titles of recent memory). But the number of songs that just fiddled (3 versions of "Shit, Scheisse, Merde"?) made on wonder if the band was running out of musical steam after their self-titled debut.

Fortunately, Myth Takes resoundingly puts that fear to rest. The album finds the band with a new musical purpose. Their music has greater depth, aided in great part by their more consistent use of guitars (hinted at in "Me and Rudy Giuliani..." but never fully fleshed out). They have expanded their sound beyond simple dance music and deep grooves, incorporating hints of psychedelia (the album-opening title track), piano-driven slow-burn ("Infinifold"), and even bizarro-world R&B ("Yadnus"), all while keeping intact the groove-based tunes and danceable music that made them such a big draw in first place.

As for the lyrics, well, they haven't changed that much. Sure, "Infinifold" touches upon loss and loneliness, but it's still mostly rally cries and chants. This doesn't make a bit of difference to me (as Erik will tell you - I'm a "music first, lyrics later (if at all)" kind of guy). That said, don't expect some new poetic revelation within the songs. Titles like "All My Heroes are Weridos" and "Bend Over Beethoven" are about as complex as they appear.

But that never was nor is the point with !!!. They are about having fun, and making some music that makes you want to move (though let's get rid of this stupid "dance-rock" categorization - man, I hate that term). Few bands can groove and rock quite like !!! can, and the expansion of their sound makes this a very fine album.

5 square glasses (out of 6).

Music Review : The Arcade Fire - "Neon Bible"

On The Arcade Fire’s 2004 full-length Funeral, the world could be hard and cold and alienating without any reason. For every moment of hope and love with lovers and family members (“Neighborhood #1,” “In the Backseat,”) there were moments of isolation and despair (“Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” or the cheerfully wrapped “Rebellion (Lies)”. Such uncertainty and fatalistic luck (good and bad) dominated Funeral, which was marked by both leading members Win Butler and Régine Chassagne’s marriage and the death of both’s grandparents in close order. The album had a sense of being one of the most perfect farewell’s to youth, both celebratory and uncertain. It also had the unfortunate impact of putting such high expectations on the band that it seemed almost impossible to produce a follow-up that could be as outstanding and build upon the band’s already-rich musical tendencies. However, the keyword here is almost, for Neon Bible is every bit as good, and even better than, Funeral.

A lot has changed since 2004. If Funeral was a farewell to youth and a glance towards an uncertain future, The Arcade Fire’s new album, Neon Bible, finds them in the midst of a world full of death, isolation, and loss with no answers. The moments of numbing isolation and desperation from Funeral have only magnified, but without any of the glimpses of hope. For example, instead of the amazing buildup and celebration of young love “Neighborhood #1” that opened Funeral, Neon Bible opens “Black Mirror” and Butler’s numb, mumbled demand for the “Mirror Mirror on the wall/Show me where them bombs will fall”. On Neon Bible, the world is a scary place, both globally (the title track’s declaration that there is “Not much chance for survival/If the Neon Bible is Right”) and personally (such as “Ocean of Noise,” in which Butler resigns himself to a lost love by claiming that “You’ve got your reasons/and me, I’ve got mine/but all the reasons I gave/were just lies to by myself some time”). On the outstanding, Springsteen-like delivery of “(Antichrist Television Blues),” Butler turns to God for answers, and finding none, the song comes to a crashing halt as Butler asks if he is just the anti-Christ. One looks for hope, but for the first 9 tracks, there is none. Only with the last two songs we see some hope. The escapism of “No Cars Go” (an amazing, vibrantly re-produced version of the already-good song that they first did on their 2003 EP) reminds one of the hope to be found in the rally-cry of Funeral’s “Wake Up”. However, even such optimism is tempered in the album closer, “My Body Is a Cage,” in which “I’m living in an age/that calls darkness light” and in which “fear keeps me moving.” The album closes with Butler imploring to “set my spirit free,” but whether anybody or any force will remains to be seen.

<>Musically, The Arcade Fire have done as perfect a job as they could. With Funeral, critics and fans looked to them as the “saviors” of rock (memo to journalists: rock doesn’t need saving. It’s doing fine, thank you very much. It’s just always changing – the Beatles and the Who won’t happen again, get over it). Oftentimes, such expectations wipe out a band, but the Arcade Fire have done a perfect job of continuing with their full, lush sounds (such as orchestra, church organs, etc. - they aren't a band to shy away from musical majesty and grandeur), all wonderfully arranged by Chassagne. However, they haven’t gotten comfortable with their sound, either. Here, there are greater levels of distortion, reverb, and murky sound, adding to the panic and showing sonic exploration on the part of the band without stretching beyond their limits. Thus, while “Black Mirror” is muddy, lacking the clarity of Funeral’s opener, we still get the orchestrated, glorious buildups (“Intervention,” “(Antichrist Television Blues)”, “My Body Is a Cage,”), but we also get better quiet moments than anything on Funeral (“Ocean of Noise,” “Black Waves/Bad Vibrations”). The desperation of which we got a glimpse in Funeral (such as the resignation of “Neighborhood #2” and “Rebellion (Lies)”) is in full force on Neon Bible. – “Ocean of Noise,” “The Well and the Lighthouse,” “(Antichrist Televison Blues)”. If there is any complaint about Funeral, it got a bit slow in the middle, but the group has magnificently learned. While it doesn't reveal it's excellence as immediately as Funeral did, Neon Bible never lets up, and proves itself even more durable. The variation from song to song is greater, and it never loses the momentum and interest of the listener. Although they only have two full-lengths and one EP in the bag thus far, if the band continues as it has, then we can safely say, without hyperbole, The Arcade Fire are making a strong case to be one of the best bands of the first decade or two (or more) of this century.

6 square glasses (out of 6)