Thread: Favorite Albums
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Old 2011.07.09, 11:31 AM   #46
Tokyo Jihad
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#12: Funeral

Not every album clicks at once. Amongst overwhelming critical and popular acclaim, you are some times left wondering what is wrong with you. What am I not hearing? Why don’t I get it? Sometimes you have to make a concentrated effort in the hopes of earning some sort of reward. Arcade Fire came during a time when I found the music scene confusing and blurry. Burned by the 2001 “rock revival” band’s lackluster follow-ups (for whatever reason, I skipped Elephant. I don’t know. I didn’t believe the press,) I grew weary of bands that came out of nowhere with a hurricane of hype.

When I first heard the Arcade Fire buzz, I queued up a song with slight hope. I don’t remember where I started nor do I remember my criticisms (too mellow? Possibly. Not straightforward enough? Probably.) I passed for close to eight years, until their 2010 album The Suburbs topped every end of year list on the internet, and 2004’s Funeral on top of every best of decade list. Yes, Funeral is a relatively recent addition to my music library. As woefully behind on the times I may be, isn’t it better to be late than to miss a great party? It was however, a party I would still have much trouble to get in to.

“Wake Up!” was the lone song I found immediately accessible, and even then that got plenty of priming from satellite radio and watching the Where the Wild Things Are trailer every single weekend for a year at the movies. I struggled mightily to put the rest of the album in to in the right frame of mind. I did not get it. But I was determined. So determined it became the only album I would play in my car for a month. After starting and restarting the album copious amounts of times, I began to finally see the urgent story in “Tunnels” play through in my head. Ah hah! But I still failed to grasp the album as a whole.

My breakthrough came when I first heard “In the Backseat,” the album’s closer. I usually got frustrated around “Haiti” or wanted to loop back to “Tunnels” after “Wake Up” or whatever poor excuse there was, but I apparently never managed to hear the final track. As the chorus opened up to its operatics and crashed to its coda, the record suddenly made sense! I failed to embrace the “opera” part of Arcade Fire’s rock-opera approach and missed just how unique it was. Sometimes you have to hear the story’s end to know understand the story.
Suddenly, I got it.

Except “Power Out.” Many claim this to be the most accessible song on the record, but I found the syncopation of the melody, mirrored by the main guitar riff, to be quite awkward. For a while, “Power Out” was my designated skip. That January, San Antonio had a hard freeze overnight that left much of the city without electricity the morning after. As I set out to trek to my mother’s house on the lightless/lawless streets that morning, it mused the song might be the comically perfect soundtrack for this particular drive. As cars drove with abandon, turning left whenever they felt; the anarchy in the song meshed. “I went out in to the night, I went out to pick a fight with anyone” as a car was within inches of my driver-side door as I wagged my finger.

Funeral is a record of the pangs of growing up. From the yearning to run off from home and carve your life in the earth, to the inevitable heart ache that wishes it was of a child safely ensconced in its bedroom. I frequently read of Funeral’s somberness, and I never agree. Sure, there’s plenty of melancholy is palpable, but the album has always read as the celebration of overcoming such dejection. Requisite indie band reference to the poor dog sent in to space, be damned: this is a happy album!

A complaint often levied at Arcade Fire is that their songs sound the same, they have one song, “the Arcade Fire song.” They do have a very unique sound, but on Funeral we certainly get to hear that sound applied to very different constructs. The island groove of “Haiti” the arena anthems “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Power Out” and epics “Wake up” and “Tunnels,” and the bolero-esque “Crown of Love” preceded by the near lullaby of “7 Kettles.” Funeral is certainly short of any mournful hymns.

I’m glad I made the effort with Funeral. Afterwards I could tackle The Suburbs and Neon Bible, either of which could maybe grow their way into my Top 20. But neither influenced the way I approach an album like Funeral had. Not every album that “everyone else” is into is going to turn out like my #12 album, but there’s times when you know it’s you, the listener, that’s mishearing things. It is worth sticking it out those times.

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This wraps up the “bottom 10” of my Top 20 albums. Thank you for sticking with me so far, and I hope this is at least 10% interesting, and 90% a reminder of some really good music. Henceforth we will be in my top 10 favorite albums. Albums that I have listened to for a good chunk of my life and, for better or worse, defined my temperament towards music entirely. For those that know me well, there may be less surprises, but hopefully no less interesting how my feelings for them have developed and changed. I’m on the edge of my seat if you aren’t!
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Last edited by Tokyo Jihad : 2011.07.09 at 11:41 AM.
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