Arcade Fire

[wounder]

Pitchfork promuoverà alla grande

E infatti ecco l'8.6

[AFX]

e vaffanculo ai detrattori un'altra volta allora, poi me la leggo

[wounder]

Leggermente contorta nelle motivazioni

But when they turned that same all-or-nothing intensity outward on Neon Bible, otherwise propulsive and elegant songs were sometimes bogged down by overblown arrangements or pedantic political statements. You'd figure an album bluntly called The Suburbs that focuses on The Way We Live might repeat some of Neon Bible's worst tendencies. Instead, it's a satisfying return to form-- proof that Arcade Fire can still make grand statements without sounding like they're carrying the weight of the world.

Ce l'ha con la presunta pomposità di Neon Bible. Vabbe'. Sulla qualità di The Suburbs però siamo tutti d'accordo.

[Shaun]

Se non lo trovo in settimana credo che ucciderò qualcuno.
Sto cercando di non ascoltarlo, di riempirmi le orecchie di musica di ogni genere per saturarmi al punto da non aver bisogno di altri suoni se non quelli del ronzio del condizionatore. Una cosa così.

[wounder]

Quella su Neon Bible, comunque, è un'opinione che più di qualcuno cova, a quanto pare

[toolipano]

Comprato oggi!!! a 9.99 sterline, quello con la copertina più colorata! Sono un uomo felice

[AFX]

complimenti
chissà quando mi arriva che l'ho ordinato da play...

[AFX]

http://www.songlyrics.com/arcade-fire/rococo-lyrics/ che testo comunque... tra questo e quel verso su Suburban War .. you get what I mean?

[Shaun]

It’s amazing that Arcade Fire works as well as it does. On paper, the band seems like an exercise in grandiosity and self-importance — this is a group that features about a zillion musicians singing loud, sweeping songs about love and war and honor and loss. In some alternate universe, they’re featured in the ending credits of Steven Spielberg films.

Indie rock emerged from punk, which emerged partly as a rejection of the bombast and melodrama of 1970s stadium rock lunkheads like Electric Light Orchestra and Pink Floyd. A lot has changed since punk’s late-’70s heyday, of course, but indie rock emerged as a genre of music that was about small cultural moments and people who felt like they were on the cultural margins.

The smallness of ’80s and ’90s indie rock fit it well, aesthetically, but it was also borne partly out of necessity. It wasn’t possible for some unknown band in Lawrence, Kansas to make any but the simplest recordings, and so it made very little sense to bring in a string section or a bassoonist, since those instruments would just make a muddy recording even muddier.

In the 2000s, that changed, as good recording equipment got cheaper and easier to use. More and more indie rock bands began incorporating the string section or the bassoonist, and, probably because these sorts of possibilities existed, indie rock musicians became much more technically proficient. Indie rock, led by people like Sufjan Stevens and Arcade Fire, began to have a dramatic scope that harked back to... ELO and Pink Floyd, the sorts of bands punk was rejecting in the first place.

Indie rock’s audience changed, too, although it probably changed more slowly than the music did. As with punk, cultural identification with indie rock was initially built around rejection, around avoiding cheesiness. Today, thanks to the internet, it is now easier than ever before to find music you like, however obscure it might be, and ignore music you don’t. Now, it’s just a waste of energy to worry too much about music you don’t like. All music is now disposable, and thus there is no reason to define yourself against something else.

Still, traces of indie rock’s punk spirit do linger in most of its listeners. It does still take modestly more effort to find indie rock that it does to find, say, Justin Bieber, and so most indie rock listeners have found the music they like at least in part because, on some level, more mainstream music doesn’t do it for them.

All this puts a band like Arcade Fire in a tricky position, because what they’ve always done is to take the basic framework of indie rock (for example, "Neighborhood #2," from their debut album, is straight out of the Modest Mouse songbook) and add more stuff (more strings, more melodrama, more lyrics about love and loss) that most indie rock previously would’ve rejected.

It’s mostly a very, very good thing that they’ve done this, and that they’ve led a contrarian like me to try to become a Bruce Springsteen fan qualifies as a minor miracle. (It didn’t take, but I did try.) There’s always the risk, though, that they’re going to careen a bit too far into Spielberg territory. Let us not forget that Spielberg’s films are emotionally manipulative pieces of shit, and they always will be. The Suburbs has much to recommend it, and there have been few rock albums in the past year that I’ve liked more, but it doesn’t quite meet my stratospheric expectations, mostly because of the Spielberg thing.

While The Suburbs exhumes some influences that before had been buried (rigid new wave figures prominently here, and "Sprawl II" is ’70s pop that sounds for all the world like ABBA), most of it occupies precisely the same emotional zone as their last album, Neon Bible, did. Arcade Fire’s debut, Funeral, sounded youthful and urgent thanks to its lo-fi production and driving rhythms, but Neon Bible was bleaker, more professional, and more detached, and it sounded like the band had aged 15 years instead of three.

This wasn’t a bad thing, but the release of another album with exactly the same character threatens to turn Arcade Fire into Arcade Fire(TM). What they do now feels like it’s based less on inspiration than on craft. The rather ham-fisted title of The Suburbs also creates the impression that Arcade Fire is trying to force Big Themes into their music. And while most of the lyrics convey a sense of drifting, ambiguous nostalgia more than anything else, some of them are a little too obvious: “They heard me singing and they told me to stop / Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock... Living in the sprawl, dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains.” Whereas Funeral sounded like it existed because it had to, The Suburbs often sounds very aware of where it’s leading its audience, just as a Spielberg film does.

But still! There are a ton of great songs here, starting with the title track, which manages to be gripping and mysterious despite being built around materials (a few simple chords, a shuffling tempo) that feel thoroughly familiar. As with Neon Bible, the ultra-clear production showcases adroit string arrangements and lots of other extras, but the songs would be fine without them.

Mostly I’m just inclined to enjoy The Suburbs as a really good piece of art, but I’m also struck by how aware it seems of all the buttons it’s pressing. Fifteen years ago, indie rock didn’t really lead its audience around this forcefully. There simply weren’t many listeners, and a lot of the most obvious emotional-manipulation tools (like strings) weren’t really a part of indie rock then. Also, most indie rock musicians just weren’t skilled enough to try something with Arcade Fire’s scope, and so even the really weepy types, like Lou Barlow, mostly tried to tug on their own heartstrings first.

Neon Bible, though, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard chart. Arcade Fire have an enormous audience and enormous amounts of money. They’ve never shied away from the big, vague themes that arena-rock bands like U2 favor. And their music is now so technically perfect and so filled with well-targeted, yet obvious, emotional cues that it almost feels like it’s coming from some grand Wizard of Oz, and not from people like you and me. The Suburbs is a really good record, but it’s clear that indie rock is not in Kansas anymore.

Un'altra rece positiva, nonostante un po' di indie-snobismo.

[Pilgrim]

intervista per pitchfork.

SpoilerShow

Pitchfork: How did you guys get Terry Gilliam involved in shooting the webcast at Madison Square Garden?

Win Butler: The opportunity to film the show came up at the last minute, and we just gave him a call. We knew it was gonna be a long shot, but the timing was perfect. He's my total hero. My favorite English teacher in high school showed me Brazil when I was 15 and it blew my mind. It's one of those movies that's revealed itself in different ways as I've gone back to it over the years.

With a lot of my favorite records-- like Blonde on Blonde-- every time I listen to it I'm like, "Oh yeah, this song's on this record?" even though I've heard it 100,000 times. I have the same experience with Brazil. When I was 15, it was overwhelming; I don't think I got half of what was going on. I wasn't like, "That's my favorite film," as much as I was like, "What just happened to me?" I watched it again when I was 18 and had a much better grasp on it. When I was older, the nuance of the love story probably hit home a lot more, but I probably related to the science fiction-y elements when I was younger.

Pitchfork: Was he familiar with your music when you contacted him?

WB: Yeah, he'd come to see us play in Brixton on the last tour with Heath Ledger, actually. We sent him a copy of The Suburbs and I guess he moved from rural Minnesota to somewhere in the San Fernando Valley in the 50s, so he had the classic experience growing up in the suburbs where they had just cut down the orange groves and set up this totally prefabricated community. He was talking about how it reminded him of his youth even though it was this cross-generational thing. I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.

Pitchfork: How is it going to be different than a normal live concert webcast?

WB: We're not sure yet. It's fun because it's so last minute. That's the way this band always works. In the early days, my biggest frustration was like, "What do you mean you can't book a tour a week before it's supposed to happen? That's crazy." Terry is coming out to Montreal and he's gonna ride on the bus with us and hang out and shoot ideas around. It's a new medium. It's like having a live TV program and you have a certain amount of time to fill and be creative and have fun with it.

Pitchfork: Do you remember any concert films you watched growing up that had an affect on you?

WB: I was a huge Cure fan in high school and I really liked The Cure in Orange. It's in this old amphitheater in France and Robert Smith had short hair-- that was like the most powerful thing in the film. Like, "Wow, his hair's short. What the hell? I can see his face."

Pitchfork: That's funny because when you guys first started doing shows for this tour, a lot of people were talking about your hair as well-- on the internet, at least. [laughs]

WB: Being in a rock band, I feel a certain responsibility to have a weird haircut. I mean, who else gets to do that? [laughs]

Pitchfork: As far as airing the concert across the internet, I feel like some bands wouldn't want to give things away like that, especially at the beginning of a tour. Was that a concern for you?

WB: I'll take any opportunity I can get for people to engage with the actual art. There are so many bands that I'm kind of aware of through media about them, and it ends up filtering my experience of the actual music. It's strange being in a time where rock radio and MTV-- two of the ways I was exposed to music when I was younger-- have really shifted so much that it's increasingly difficult for people to actually hear the music itself. I find myself a lot more open to bands if I just hear their song; if I see a band on "SNL" I'll be like, "Oh, I like that Vampire Weekend song." It gives you an opportunity to engage with the thing itself and not be overwhelmed by everything else that surrounds it.

Pitchfork: As far as stuff like that goes, it seems that when you licensed "Wake Up" for the Super Bowl and gave the proceeds to Haiti relief efforts, it was the best of both worlds; everybody gets exposed to your music, but it's not crass.

WB: That was very much an emergency situation and we were trying to figure out ways to make money fast to help Haiti. It was just such a no-brainer. At that time, I pretty much said we'd be open to licensing stuff we'd normally say no to-- but we still couldn't do a car commercial for "Keep the Car Running" because it would change the song forever. Even in the emergency situation, there are still lines we couldn't quite bring ourselves across.

Pitchfork: I read that you guys worked with Spike Jonze recently, was that for a music video?

WB: It's not a video. It's a short film; we're still working on it. It's like a science-fiction B-movie companion piece for the record.

Basically, we played Spike some music from the album and the first images that came to his mind had the same feeling as this idea for a science fiction film I had when I was younger. My brother and I and Spike wrote it together, which was really fun-- it was like total amateur hour.

We shot it in Austin and a lot of kids are in the film, and it was great just hanging out with these 15-year-olds for a week and writing down all the funny things they said. It was cool to revert to being a 15-year-old for a little while.

Pitchfork: Do you know how long it will be?

WB: I don't. That would be good to know... we run a really tight ship here at Arcade Fire. [laughs]

Pitchfork: It's not bad how you can go from doing this free-form thing with Spike Jonze and then get Terry Gilliam to film a show at Madison Square Garden.

WB: It surprises us, too. Everything like is like, "Really? We get to do this? OK, well, we're gonna do it like this. Is that OK? It is? All right. Bye." [laughs]