So I reviewed Funeral and found it to be... well, competent. Also dreary, warbly, and musically shallow. Today's subject is Neon Bible. I really hope that doesn't turn out to be pretentious.
"Black Mirror" is not a sign of progress. The song starts quietly with a piano pounding out eighth notes. It's a dark melody, which I like, and the song builds slowly, which is also nice. But the song doesn't really change. It builds just by adding more instruments that just play the same thing as the piano. I still kinda like the song, but it's very much like what I heard on Funeral, maybe a bit harder and darker. I really don't want to hear a darker Funeral. Please Neon Bible, do something more.
"Keep The Car Running" convinces me that Arcade Fire really like 80s music and want to be an 80s band. In this case I'm not criticizing. I actually like this song. It's full and rich and lively. The title track follows and... what? It's almost like while making the album somebody thought, "We should call it Neon Bible! Because that sounds cool!" Then to make sure people didn't think they were being pretentious they threw together this little piece of junk.
Writing a song to include a full organ must be difficult, but Arcade Fire's solution to this problem is to play an ordinary song and just add an organ. Organs sound fantastic, they really don't need an indie rock band accompanyment. "Intervention" sounds really lovely and was quite expertly produced. I will say Neon Bible thus far is much richer than Funeral. The sound isn't burried under reverb or distortion. I'm still not really impressed by the actual music.
"Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" starts out with a twee dark synthesizer piece sung by the female lead. I find her voice way more annoying than Win's, but about 2 minutes in the attitude changes- the song slows down, and Win takes over. It makes it sound like 2 songs jammed together. I have no idea why this song has two very distinct halves that don't really compliment each other. It's quite a bit jarring.
Arcade Fire really likes writing songs filled with eighth notes. "The Well And The Lighthouse" includes a twist where halfway through the time switches from boppy 4/4 time to slow 6/8, changing a boring but energetic song into just a boring one. I would write out the title of the next song, but I'm pissed that the title is in parentheses for no apparent reason.
Neon Bible was prettier than Funeral but I still have the same issues. I feel like so many of Arcade Fire's songs are too similar to each other. While there is a plethora of different instruments used throughout they only serve to add more sound to the melody rather than new layers or countermelody. Basically all they did with the 3 years since Funeral was learn how to play organ. Which is admittedly difficult, but slightly easier when you just use it to pound out the same old chords. 2 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment