THE ARCADE FIRE
THE ROXY, BOSTON MA, 3 FEBRUARY 2005
We are dependent on the plenitude of products and services available to us that meet only our lowest expectations. We are thankful for the predictable fallibility of our snacks, our headgear, our earth-moving equipment, because their innate mediocrity allows us to ignore them, to focus on more pressing issues, like why we are always tired, or why our neighbors are always banging sheets of metal in their yard. Otherwise, we would be stymied by our own wonder and amazement at everything. We are aware, for example, that the world’s greatest corn chip has already been eaten, long ago, by a shirtless man in Duluth, but it is this knowledge that actually allows us to enjoy corn chips of a quality that would, in an earlier economic mode, bring shame on an entire community. So too, with the greatest golf shirt (Shenzhen, 1947), PowerPoint presentation (Prague, 1952), and salad dressing (Seekonk, 2003): these models of excellence are the magnetic north of our aesthetic compass, but we move through the world secretly relieved that the majority of objects we handle just barely echo their greatness. Occasionally, however, a work of art will alight somewhere along the moving front of the global capitalist empire and pierce its Kevlar-coated surface, creating such a colossal sucking void that we are forced to take notice. When and where such a puncture occurs is manifestly incalculable, which is precisely what makes the object capable of such disruption.
The Arcade Fire consists of a group of startled young North American citizens who probably had little idea that Funeral, the album they created and assembled for Merge Records in 2004, would generate a storm front of such magnitude in the world of popular music. The proof: They booked a tour of small, cruddy bars across the United States and Canada in advance of the album’s release, expecting only moderate attendance. The critical and popular response to Funeral was so overwhelming, however, that they were forced to negotiate larger venues on the fly, as they traveled, playing to bigger crowds in each city, sometimes booking multiple nights at the same venue, just to meet the demand. It is likely that the cause of this spontaneous fervor was the prerelease viral spread throughout the internet of the album opener, ‘”Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels),” a diminutive masterwork of nervous, baroque pop that unfolds patiently, never reaching its fever pitch until the final, explosive moments. “Tunnels” begins tentatively with a scattershot spray of notes from a distant, underwater piano that suggests nothing of the song’s looming collage of styles and motifs—each individually familiar, perhaps, but refreshing and disturbing in this...
We are dependent on the plenitude of products and services available to us that meet only our lowest expectations. We are thankful for the predictable fallibility of our snacks, our headgear, our earth-moving equipment, because their innate mediocrity allows us to ignore them, to focus on more pressing issues, like why we are always tired, or why our neighbors are always banging sheets of metal in their yard. Otherwise, we would be stymied by our own wonder and amazement at everything. We are aware, for example, that the world’s greatest corn chip has already been eaten, long ago, by a shirtless man in Duluth, but it is this knowledge that actually allows us to enjoy corn chips of a quality that would, in an earlier economic mode, bring shame on an entire community. So too, with the greatest golf shirt (Shenzhen, 1947), PowerPoint presentation (Prague, 1952), and salad dressing (Seekonk, 2003): these models of excellence are the magnetic north of our aesthetic compass, but we move through the world secretly relieved that the majority of objects we handle just barely echo their greatness. Occasionally, however, a work of art will alight somewhere along the moving front of the global capitalist empire and pierce its Kevlar-coated surface, creating such a colossal sucking void that we are forced to take notice. When and where such a puncture occurs is manifestly incalculable, which is precisely what makes the object capable of such disruption.
The Arcade Fire consists of a group of startled young North American citizens who probably had little idea that Funeral, the album they created and assembled for Merge Records in 2004, would generate a storm front of such magnitude in the world of popular music. The proof: They booked a tour of small, cruddy bars across the United States and Canada in advance of the album’s release, expecting only moderate attendance. The critical and popular response to Funeral was so overwhelming, however, that they were forced to negotiate larger venues on the fly, as they traveled, playing to bigger crowds in each city, sometimes booking multiple nights at the same venue, just to meet the demand. It is likely that the cause of this spontaneous fervor was the prerelease viral spread throughout the internet of the album opener, ‘”Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels),” a diminutive masterwork of nervous, baroque pop that unfolds patiently, never reaching its fever pitch until the final, explosive moments. “Tunnels” begins tentatively with a scattershot spray of notes from a distant, underwater piano that suggests nothing of the song’s looming collage of styles and motifs—each individually familiar, perhaps, but refreshing and disturbing in this...
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