Demob Happy

“There’s a great black wave in the middle of the sea”

8/10

Neon Bible may not have the conceptual unity of Arcade Fire’s debut Funeral, but if anything it is more funereal, a vast cathedral of sound threatening to overwhelm the listener like a “great black wave in the middle of the sea”. Win Butler’s urgent, unhinged vocals have an erratic explosiveness that hovers between joyous optimism and the apocalyptic. It is this tension that drives Neon Bible, very much an album to be taken as a whole and with few obvious singles. The music is spring-loaded and nervous, an ocean-tide of emotion building upon a feverish Springstein stomp that never quite descends into the chaos it threatens. It is an anxious listen, with sometimes frustratingly muffled production, recorded as it was in a cathedral with organs, hurdy gurdy and choirs in full effect. It’s an album to take your time with, revealing more with repeated listens after an initial impression of relentlessness.

‘Black Mirror’ is an obvious highlight, both dirge-like and joyous at the same time, while ‘Keep the Car Running’ plays to all their strengths and is the closest the album has to a crossover anthem. The mass of pipe organs on ‘Intervention’ won’t appeal to everyone but works for me for its gutsy singularity, despite its slightly self-indulgent lyrics. So dense is the wall of sound that the track almost verges into the pure sonics of shoe-gaze but is reigned in by Butler’s volatile vocals. The opening of the two-piece ‘Black Wave/ Bad Vibrations’ sounds like a sock has been put over the speaker, Renee Chassagne sounding muted before the track changes direction for Butler’s evocation of a “great black wave” - the album’s most resonant image. The poor quality of the production here though is frustrating, and one can’t help but feel that this track was just two ideas sewn awkwardly together when the second part (Butler’s) could have been easily fleshed out into the album’s centrepiece. ‘Ocean of Noise’ is ponderous and murky, but ‘The Well and the Lighthouse returns the album to their fist-pumping, exhuberant best, with shrill orhestration and interwoven male/female vocal turns. This mood is sustained with ‘Building Downtown (Antichrist Television Blues)’, which is more transparent in its Springsteen influence but forgivably so. ‘Windowsill’ is full of foreboding and dread (”the tide is high, and I don’t want to see it at my windowsill”) while ‘No Cars Go’ is the album’s obvious climax - so much so that the closer ‘My Body is a Cage’ feels a little superflous.

Neon Bible lacks a cathartitic release, and the moments of levity provided on Funeral by the likes of Haiti, but its a vast record as emotionally intense as they come in modern music and an essential purchase. Definitely one of the albums of the year from one of the best recent bands.

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