Arcade Fire – Funeral

Following on from our recent sporting icon debate, our attention has now turned to music. What is the best album of the horribly christened ‘noughties’?

Forget the boring Strokes and the many other identikit, skinny jeaned indie bands. Forget even the remarkable come back by Take That. The album of the decade is the peerless and without comparison, Arcade Fire’s Funeral.

Released in the UK in early 2005, the album is all at once euphoric, empowering, mournful and joyful. As the title suggests, the album will take you through all the emotions – from the pain of losing a loved one, to the joyful feeling of celebrating someone’s life.

From the haunting piano keys and angular guitars of album opener, Neighborhood1 (tunnels), to the albums biggest single and most joyous 5 minutes, Rebellion (lies), ‘funeral’ takes the listener on an oral odyssey which reaffirmed the idea that indie can actually be quite interesting when it wants to be. Organs, xylophones, synths, accordions and mandolins are all thrown in to create the bands sonic soundscapes. The record sounds massive.

Vocalist Win Butler, with his yearning, heart-felt yelp, sounds as if he is a man on the edge of an emotional precipice. For evidence see the epic, gospel like, life affirming, emotional wreck that is Wake Up, the albums tour de force. An ode to children’s innocence, hear Butler wail as if his life depends on it : “If the children don’t grow up, our bodies get bigger but our heart’s get torn up, Were just a million little gods causin’ rain storms turnin’ ever good thing to dust.”

The album went gold by November 2005 in the UK and the band would receive even more success with the release of their second album ‘Neon Bible’ in 2007, but it is ‘Funeral’ that still remains their most potent work. Have you ever heard a more uplifting song than Rebellion or a song as stripped back, beautiful and lullaby-like as anne sans lumiere?

An indie album which is interesting and dangerous, celebratory and joyous, emotional and mournful, ‘Funeral’ is an album made up of many juxtapositions and contrasts, both musically and lyrically. It is by far and away the best album of the noughties and far more exciting than ‘ New York City Cops’.