Neon Bible

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This article is about the Arcade Fire album. For the novel, see The Neon Bible.
Neon Bible
Neon Bible cover
Studio album by Arcade Fire
Released March 3, 2007
Recorded 2006 in Quebec, New York, Budapest, and London
Genre Indie rock
Length 47:03
Label Merge, Rough Trade
Producer Arcade Fire
Professional reviews
Arcade Fire chronology
Funeral
(2004)		 Neon Bible
(2007)
Singles from Neon Bible
  1. "Black Mirror"
    Released: January 22, 2007
  2. "Keep the Car Running"
    Released: March 19, 2007
  3. "Intervention"
    Released: May 21, 2007
  4. "No Cars Go"
    Released: August 6, 2007

Neon Bible is the second album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire. It was released on March 5, 2007 in Europe and March 6, 2007 in North America by Rough Trade and Merge, respectively. Originally announced on December 16, 2006 through the band's website,[1] a majority of the album was recorded in a church that the band bought and renovated.[2]

Neon Bible was Arcade Fire's highest debuting album on the Billboard 200 at number two. Being released within a month of similar debuts by The Shins' Wincing the Night Away and Modest Mouse's We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Neon Bible was cited as an example of the commercialization of indie.[3] Critics offered the self-produced Neon Bible mostly favorable reviews. Publications like NME and IGN praised the album for its grandiose nature,[4][5] while Rolling Stone and Uncut said that it resulted in a distant and overblown sound.[6][7] Many also compared Neon Bible to Arcade Fire's previous album, Funeral, with opinion on the better being generally split.

Contents

[edit] Production

Following the release of Funeral, which had been recorded in an attic studio known as Hotel 2 Tango, Arcade Fire decided a permanent recording location was necessary. Following their tour in support of Funeral, the band bought the Petite Église in Farnham, Quebec, Canada.[8] Being used as a café at the time of purchase, the Petite Église had once been a church and a Masonic temple. Once renovation of the church was complete, the band spent the latter half of 2006 recording a majority of the album there. They additionally recorded in Budapest, Hungary where a Hungarian orchestra and a military men's choir were used.[8] Other sessions included one in New York, when the band wanted to be near water and recorded along the Hudson River.[8]

[edit] Composition

Beginning work on Neon Bible immediately following a North American tour in support of Funeral, songwriter Win Butler, born in the United States but having lived in Canada for several years, said that he felt he was observing his homeland from an outsider's point of view.[9] The album is rooted in Americana themes, with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Presley being cited as influences.[10]

Arcade Fire began recording with what would become "Black Mirror" and a reworking of the Arcade Fire EP song "No Cars Go" as their starting point.[10] Once the title of the album was decided upon, the band was further inspired after they, according to Will Butler, "watched a lot of TV preachers, get-rich-quick schemes on YouTube."[10] The band was also attracted to using the ocean and television as central images for the album, with Win Butler saying the ocean imagery symbolizes a lack of control and television representing the band's feelings on its surprisingly strong influence of today's culture.[11]

These ideas are reflected in the arrangement and composition of the album, which lead to a sound of dread and dissonance.[9] The band used a number of less common instruments to achieve this sound; in addition to the orchestra and choir, Neon Bible features a hurdy-gurdy, mandolin, accordion and pipe organ.[12] Win Butler has said that in conceiving the album he hoped for a more stripped-down sound but the songs demanded further instrumentation.[11]

[edit] Artwork

The artwork for the album is a photograph of a six-foot neon sign that the band commissioned for use while on tour. In the photograph used for the cover, the lighted Bible is caught in mid-flicker.[8] Rolling Stone named the artwork one of the five best of the year.[13] AOL Music cited the cover as an example of an artist "keeping artwork alive."[14] The artwork would go on to win Tracy Maurice and François Miron the Juno Award for best CD/DVD Artwork Design of the Year.[15] Frontman Win Butler stated in an interview that the album title is derived from him being particularly attracted to the image, not from the John Kennedy Toole novel The Neon Bible.[2]

[edit] Promotion

Largely due to Régine Chassagne's ancestry, the band has tried to raise support and awareness for the socio-economic problems in Haiti throughout their career. On December 26, 2006, they supported Haitian charity organization Partners in Health by releasing the song "Intervention" on iTunes and donating the proceeds.[16] However, they accidentally uploaded "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations", the track after "Intervention" on Neon Bible. While the song was quickly removed once the problem was discovered, file sharers quickly circulated it on various P2P networks. On his blog, Win Butler quipped, "I guess it is sort of charming that we can send the wrong song to the whole world with a click of a mouse... Oh well."[17]

On December 28, 2006, the band allowed listeners to listen to their first single, "Black Mirror", by calling the number (866) NEON-BIBLE, extension number 7777.[17] The song was also streamed on the band's website beginning on January 6, 2007.[18] The following day, the band revealed a variety of information about the album through a YouTube video. The video, which played a number of sound clips from the upcoming album and featured "Juno-award winning guitarist Richard Reed Perry", gave the album's track listing, release date, and record label.[19]

On February 2, 2007, all the lyrics to Neon Bible was released on the band's website.[20] Also included was the text and an audio clip of a child reading "The Wolf and the Fox", a French fable allegedly written by 17th century French poet Jean La Fontaine alluding to the song "The Well and the Lighthouse", which is loosely based around the fable. This was followed on February 5, 2007 with the band releasing a promotional pamphlet as a JPEG image on their website that included album-related imagery and much of the French and English text from "The Wolf and the Fox".[21]

In October 2007, Arcade Fire created a website at beonlineb.com with the date October 6 displayed on it. After speculation over what the website was about, including rumours of new material or a live streaming of a concert, it was eventually revealed to be a video for "Neon Bible", featuring Win Butler's face and hands, which the viewer can interact with during the song. "Neon Bible" was the first song on the album to have a music video.[22]

Arcade Fire performing in support of Neon Bible at the United Palace Theater on May 7, 2007.
Arcade Fire performing in support of Neon Bible at the United Palace Theater on May 7, 2007.

[edit] Tour

Arcade Fire began their tour in support of the album before its release, playing five shows between February 12, 2007 and February 17 at the Judson Memorial Church in New York City. The first North American leg of the tour began April 26 in San Diego and April 28 at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and contained 26 dates.[23] This leg contained openings by The National, St. Vincent, and Electrelane. The band then began an 11-date European leg at Glastonbury Festival on June 22 before returning to North America for 10 more LCD Soundsystem-supported dates beginning September 15 at Austin City Limits.[24] The Neon Bible tour continued with 14 more dates in Europe between October 25 and November 19, and six dates beginning January 18, 2008 in Australia and New Zealand as part of the Big Day Out festival. The tour then ended after three more shows from February 7 in Japan.[25]

[edit] Reception

Compared to the band's debut, Funeral, Neon Bible has experienced breakthrough commercial success. During its first week, it debuted at number one in both Canada and the Republic of Ireland, and number two in the United States, the United Kingdom and Portugal. In the United States, Neon Bible was out-charted only by Notorious B.I.G.'s greatest hits compilation in the U.S. and the Kaiser Chiefs's Yours Truly, Angry Mob in the U.K.[26] It was certified gold by the CRIA in Canada in March 2007.[27]

Upon release, Neon Bible garnered mostly positive critical reception, receiving the seventh highest score of 2007 from review aggregated Metacritic.[28] NME reviewer Mark Beaumont commented the album "is a climactic monolith of a record in the grand tradition of melodic transatlantic clamour rock."[4] The A.V. Club reviewer Kyle Ryan interpreted the album as a commentary on the post-9/11 American world, saying that "the band is seemingly sending a beacon to other reasonable people forced underground by the world's insanity."[29] Stylus contributor Derek Miller saw the album in similar terms, saying that while the album touches on "violence, paranoia, the falsity of simple labor, the war-call of organized religion—a what's what of indie turmoil after 2003" the band go further to the point where its "thematic threads bind the songs."[30]

IGN, in giving the album 8.9 out of 10, said "the playing overall seems tighter and more cohesive" and that the album is a "grandiose project, one teeming with jubilant enthusiasm and reverent abundance."[5] Other publications agreed, but felt such was a negative. Rolling Stone reviewer David Fricke wrote that he was surprised such a large band could "sound so distant here so often," saying that "the result is a huge sound that only sparkles on the edges, leaving Butler alone in the middle."[6]Uncut's three star review of the album said "at its overblown worst Neon Bible is one of those records that takes itself too seriously to be taken seriously."[7]

Neon Bible was a finalist for the 2007 Polaris Music Prize,[31] but lost to Patrick Watson's Close to Paradise. Neon Bible was nominated for Best Alternative Album for the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. It was #4 in NME albums of the year, fourth in Rolling Stone's list of albums of the year and album of the year in Q in December 2007.[32] The album won the 2008 Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year.

[edit] Accolades

Publication Accolade Rank[28]
Billboard Staff Consensus 2007 Albums of the Year 2
Blender 2007 Albums of the Year 2
NME 2007 Albums of the Year 4
The Onion A.V. Club Staff Consensus 2007 Albums of the Year 1
Q 2007 Albums of the Year 1
Rolling Stone 2007 Albums of the Year 4
Spin 2007 Albums of the Year 2
Village Voice Pazz & Jop: 2007 Albums of the Year 5

[edit] Editions

The deluxe case (left), and the regular version (right)
The deluxe case (left), and the regular version (right)

Neon Bible was released in three versions. They included:

  • A traditional compact disc.
  • A deluxe compact disc packaged in a paperboard clamshell box with a lenticular front cover and accompanied by two 32-page flip books designed by Tracy Maurice.[33]
  • A double LP that featured the album on three sides of the vinyl at 180-gram quality and an etching on the fourth side. This release also came with a code to allow purchasers to download the entire album in the MP3 format. Due to manufacturing delays, this release came out more than two months after the other two on May 8, 2007.[33]

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Black Mirror" – 4:13
  2. "Keep the Car Running" – 3:29
  3. "Neon Bible" – 2:16
  4. "Intervention" – 4:19
  5. "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" – 3:57
  6. "Ocean of Noise" – 4:53
  7. "The Well and the Lighthouse" – 3:56
  8. "(Antichrist Television Blues)" – 5:10
  9. "Windowsill" – 4:16
  10. "No Cars Go" – 5:43
  11. "My Body Is a Cage" – 4:47

[edit] Charts and certifications

Chart Peak position[34]
Canadian Albums Chart 1
Irish Album Chart 1
CMJ Radio 200 1
U.S. Billboard 200 2
UK Album Chart 2
Portugal Albums Top 30 2
Croatian Albums Chart 3
United World Chart 3
Norway Albums Top 40 3
Final Albums Top 40 5
Iceland Albums Chart 5
Australian ARIA Albums Chart 7
France Albums Chart 9
Germany Albums Top 50 11
Denmark Albums Top 40 11
Dutch Albums Top 100 13
Spain Albums Chart 14
Sweden Albums Top 60 16
New Zealand RIANZ Albums Chart 20
Swiss Albums Top 100 23
Austria Albums Top 75 25
Italy Albums Top 50 44
Country Certification Sales/shipments
Canada 1x Platinum[35] 100,000
UK Gold[36] 100,000

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Arcade Fire name new album", NME, 2006-12-16. Retrieved on 2008-02-05. 
  2. ^ a b Modell, Josh. "Win Butler of Arcade Fire", The Onion, 2007-03-14. Retrieved on 2008-02-05. 
  3. ^ Breihan, Tom. "Let the Indie-Rock Chart-Wars Begin", Village Voice, 2007-03-15. Retrieved on 2008-02-05. 
  4. ^ a b Beaumont, Mark. "Arcade Fire: Neon Bible", NME, 2007-03-12. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  5. ^ a b D., Spence. "The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible", IGN, 2007-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  6. ^ a b Fricke, David. "Arcade Fire", Rolling Stone, 2007-03-08. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  7. ^ a b "Neon Bible", Uncut, April, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  8. ^ a b c d Micahels, Sean. "Inside the church of Arcade Fire", Paste Magazine, 2007-04-07. Retrieved on 2008-02-06. 
  9. ^ a b Kot, Greg. "Band of the Year: An Interview with Arcade Fire", PopMatters, 2007-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-03-02. 
  10. ^ a b c Dunlevy, T-cha. "Arcade Fire's Second Coming", Dose, 2007-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-03-02. 
  11. ^ a b Petrusich, Amanda. "Interview: The Arcade Fire", Pitchfork Media, 2007-05-14. Retrieved on 2008-03-02. 
  12. ^ Butler, Karl (2007-04-02). Neon Bible. Junkmedia. Retrieved on 2008-03-02.
  13. ^ Weekend Rock List: Best Album Covers of 2007. Rolling Stone (2007-12-28). Retrieved on 2008-02-06.
  14. ^ Borzykowski, Bryan. "Picture Worth a Thousand Songs?", AOL Music. Retrieved on 2008-02-06. 
  15. ^ Medley, Mark. "Juno 2008: Winners, part one", The National, April 6, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-04-06. 
  16. ^ PIH News
  17. ^ a b "Arcade Fire upload wrong song to website", NME, 2006-12-28. Retrieved on 2008-03-19. 
  18. ^ "Pitchfork: Stream: Arcade Fire: "Black Mirror"", Pitchfork Media, 2007-01-06. Retrieved on 2008-03-19. 
  19. ^ Wolosenko, AJ. "Arcade Fire announce release date, tracklist for "Neon Bible"", Prefix Magazine, 2007-01-08. Retrieved on 2008-03-19. 
  20. ^ Phillips, Amy. "Arcade Fire Reveal Neon Bible Lyrics", Pitchfork Media, 2007-02-04. Retrieved on 2008-03-19. 
  21. ^ Phillips, Amy. "Mysterious Arcade Fire Pamphlet Surfaces", Pitchfork Media, 2007-02-05. Retrieved on 2008-03-19. 
  22. ^ Richardson, Mark. "Video: The Arcade Fire: "Neon Bible"", Pitchfork Media, 2007-10-06. Retrieved on 2008-03-19. 
  23. ^ Solarski, Matthew. "Electrelane Get in on Arcade Fire Tour Action", Pitchfork Media, 2007-04-13. Retrieved on 2008-03-21. 
  24. ^ Maher, Dave. "Arcade Fire Keep Beefing Up Tour", Pitchfork Media, 2007-10-08. Retrieved on 2008-03-21. 
  25. ^ Thompson, Paul. "Arcade Fire Add More 2008 Dates", Pitchfork Media, 2007-11-27. Retrieved on 2008-03-21. 
  26. ^ Suarez, Jessica. "Pitchfork: Arcade Fire's Neon Bible Debuts at #2", Pitchforkmedia, 2007-03-14. Retrieved on 2008-03-28. 
  27. ^ CRIA Gold and Platinum Certifications for March 2007 (March 2007). Retrieved on 2008-03-28.
  28. ^ a b Best of 2007 (Albums). Metacritic. Retrieved on 2008-03-28.
  29. ^ Ryan, Kyle. "Arcade Fire", The A.V. Club, 2007-03-06. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  30. ^ Miller, Derek. "Arcade Fire", Stylus, 2007-03-05. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  31. ^ Arcade Fire, Feist on Polaris short list. Retrieved on [[July 10]], 2007.
  32. ^ 50 Best Albums - January 2008
  33. ^ a b Album description page Neon Bible album notes (2007-03-05). Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
  34. ^ Arcade Fire - Neon Bible - Music Charts. aCharts.us. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
  35. ^ Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA): Gold & Platinum - January 2005
  36. ^ Certified Awards. British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved on 2008-06-09.
v • d • e
Arcade Fire
Win Butler · Régine Chassagne · Richard Reed Parry · William Butler · Tim Kingsbury · Sarah Neufeld · Jeremy Gara
Howard Bilerman · Josh Deu · Brendan Reed · Myles Broscoe · Dane Mills · Tim Kyle  · Marika Anthony-Shaw
Studio albums
Funeral · Neon Bible
EPs
Singles
Related articles