Neon Tuesday

A difficult thing it must be to progress from a flawless piece of art. I will never know, more than likely, but I know how it feels to be betrayed by someone who failed. In music, especially, where the majority of the material is original (with some influence, obviously), improving on a sound so innovative or an album so untouchable is a delicate process. Look no further than the last year or so to see what happens when a band goes to far and fails. The Flaming Lips went too deep into their fascination with Japan. The Killers got too greedy. Bloc Party took a step sideways. The Magic Numbers tried to be more than they are. And Clap Your Hands Say Yeah just got too weird. So when Arcade Fire's Neon Bible came out Tuesday, I was worried. Worried that they'd take their success on a power trip of musical wayfaring, exploring sounds untraveled and vibes unfamiliar.

The bad news: they did.

The good news: it worked.

I've listened to the album without intermission for the last 3 days, and I've had to. The first runthrough was rough. I can't say I avoided feelings of betrayal; the distant departure from Funeral left me a bit shellshocked. But because I believed in the band and their talents I pressed on. I listened again. And again. And four more times, end-to-end. And I've come to grips with the differences, the evolution, the message and am ready to praise it. I've read little of the critics, determined to discover my own opinion before bowing to theirs (I couldn't stay away from Pitchfork, the Onion or Rolling Stone). My opinion is ready.

This isn't Funeral, and it's obvious Arcade Fire sought to hammer that point home. Bible is bigger in every sense; the lyrics are worldly, the depth of sound is hard to grasp and the message is daunting.

Let's start with the lyrics. While Funeral chronicled personal agony and loss, Bible's words warn of apocalyptic meltdowns and societal shortcomings. Win Butler's raspy scrawl leaps from his personal sufferings to the cataclysmic conditions of the world around. In "Black Mirror," the disc's opening track, Butler cries 'Mirror, mirror on the wall/Show me where them bombs will fall.' Think Snow White. The warnings continue throughout. Butler rails on war and commercialism in "Intervention" and "Windowsill," cuts up the dirtier parts of the global landscape in "Ocean of Noise" and "(Antichrist Television Blues)" and bombards us with harrowing images and gruesome depictions.

The orchestration alone would tell you as much. It takes no more than the first few bars of "Mirror" to set the grisly tone. The beats are heavy and deliberate, the bass is drowning and the words are sung cryptically. And anytime a pipe organ is involved, and you're not at church, you know it ain't a hymn they're playing. The CD is mostly deafening, with a couple crucial breaks for air and more poignant vocals. Don't think for a second that the band wanted its listeners to feel comfortable. The stacked accompaniment is a far cry from Funeral's layered instrumentation. Funeral brought instruments in gradually, astutely matching the progression of heartbreak its subjects endured. The result was a transparency that allowed the listener to feel exactly as the authors did at the exact moments. Each song ascended from a timid level 1 to an excruciating and often overwhelming level 10. Bible blinds you from the first second. There is no first level. There's barely a 10th. These songs, more often than not, go to 11.

Arcade Fire knows they probably won't change the world through the disdain they display on this record. They know they will lose some fans, too afraid to jump from the comfortable ship Funeral provided. Their loss. After one listen, I'm not sure whether I need to ice my ears or dive straight in for another go-round. I've decided, each time, to go again. 'A vial of hope and a vial of pain/In the light they both looked the same,' Butler sings in the title track. When the pain sounds this good, I have only hope for another ingenious, stand-alone album.