Arcade Fire: Funeral

CML call number: CD ROCK Arcade
Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in the New Yorker: "The band’s unusually polished début, 'Funeral,' … released in 2004, has sold more than three hundred thousand copies. … David Bowie has performed live with the band, and, on a recent tour, U2 chose 'Wake Up,' Arcade Fire’s apocalyptic sing-along about lightning bolts, to play over the sound system before its performances. … Arcade Fire speaks to several generations at once. The fervid tenor of the band’s music, always pitching toward some kind of revelation, is a quality of youth. That the songs also sound like U2’s battle calls, or the expansive rumbles of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, may account for its following among older listeners, who might otherwise be wary of musicians singing in French as well as in English, drumming on each other’s heads … and citing Haitian history. Arcade Fire earns the right to borrow or steal what it needs; the band is a torrent of energy and ideas, and its edits of the past are sometimes improvements. … Arcade Fire songs aim, without apology or irony, for grandeur, and, more often than not, they achieve it" ("Pop Music: Big Time," 2/19-26/07.)