About the Album:
“Arcade Fire’s debut…defined the independent rock of the ‘00s.” RS’20 The Montreal-based group “made symphonic rock that truly rocked, simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop.” RS’20 The group’s “emotional debut…is brave, empowering, and dusted with something that many of the indie-rock genre’s more contrived acts desperately lack: an element of real danger.” AMG The album touched on themes of “loss, love, forced coming-of-age and fragile generational hope,” RS’11 “rendered even more poignant by the dedications to recently departed family members contained in its liner notes.” AMG
“Paying tribute to lost love is a personal moment but it was the connection that the band of merry musicians shared with each other and the audience that made the experience enriching.” FO Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the married couple at the helm, “are broken, beaten, and ferociously romantic, reveling in the brutal beauty of their surroundings like a heathen Adam & Eve.” AMG “The songs here are full of the horrible electricity of grief” GU but “Funeral is anything but a morbid affair.” FO “Though the title of the album may have solemn connections…there is a palpable verve to the record that feels energising” FO and “is somehow joyous.” FO “For all its sad realism…this was music that still found solace, and purpose, in communal celebration, as anyone who saw them live during this period can attest. The upshot was an album that repaid countless listens – and made a generation of young rockers grateful for those childhood cello lessons. RS’11
“Aesthetically…there is no inherent weakness with the LP.” PM Arcade Fire “accomplished the seemingly impossible with its debut — it made music that was equally avant-garde and flat-out fun.” EB “The album addresses some of the most vulnerable moments of our society with a baroque-pop prowess that, legendary fan, David Bowie would be proud of.” FO
The songs, especially the four-part ‘Neighborhood’ suite, stir such conflicting emotions that you might find yourself drying a tear and dancing at the same time.” EB “Quiet yet anthemic, cold yet passionate, joyous yet sad, the album touches on themes as broad as power, love and death, with an overwhelmingly affective sound that will hit you right in the heart and leave you wondering how you ever got through life without this album.” GL
“The album drips with enough romanticism to rival Jeff Buckley’s Grace,” AZ inhabiting “the same post-apocalyptic world as London Suede’s Dog Man Star” RS’11 With “a rich, folkie musicality, the band made symphonic rock that truly rocked, using accordions and strings as central elements rather than merely as accessories, with a rhythm section that never let up.” RS’11 They weave “near-cinematic, folk-influenced chamber pop that slots in somewhere between Belle and Sebastian’s delicacy and the robust classicism of ’80s New Zealand bands such as the Chills and the Verlaines.” AZ “Butler sings like Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood used to play, like a lion-tamer whose whip grows shorter with each and every lash. He can barely contain himself, and when he lets loose it’s both melodic and primal, like Berlin-era Bowie or British Sea Power.” AMG
Wake Up, “featuring all 15 musicians singing in unison,” AMG “builds from a midtempo strum into a ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ gallop, which singer Win Butler interrupts with a yell: ‘You better look out below!’ Somehow, none of this hits the ear as overemotional.” AZ Songs like this “were simultaneously outsize and deeply personal, like the best pop.” RS’11
“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels), the first of four metaphorical forays into the geography of the soul, follows a pair of young lovers who meet in the middle of the town through tunnels that connect to their bedrooms. Over a soaring piano lead that’s effectively doubled by distorted guitar, they reach a Lord of the Flies-tinged utopia where they can’t even remember their names or the faces of their weeping parents.” AMG
“Neighborhood #2 (Laïka) examines suicidal desperation through an angular Gang of Four prism; the hypnotic wash of strings and subtle meter changes of Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) winsomely capture the mundane doings of day-to-day existence; and Neighborhood #3 (Power Out), Funeral’s victorious soul-thumping core, is a goose bump-inducing rallying cry centered around the notion that ‘the power’s out in the heart of man, take it from your heart and put it in your hand’.” AMG
“The Arcade Fire are not bereft of whimsy. Crown of Love is like a wedding cake dropped in slow motion, utilizing a Johnny Mandel-style string section and a sweet, soda-pop stand chorus to provide solace to a jilted lover yearning for a way back into the fold, and Haiti relies on a sunny island melody to explore the complexities of Chassagne’s mercurial homeland.” AMG
“However, it’s the sheer power and scope of cuts like ‘Wake Up’…and the mesmerizing, early-Roxy Music pulse of Rebellion (Lies) that make Funeral the remarkable achievement that it is. These are songs that pump blood back into the heart as fast and furiously as it’s draining from the sleeve on which it beats, and by the time Chassagne dissects her love of riding In the Backseat with the radio on, despite her desperate fear of driving, Funeral’s singular thread is finally revealed; love does conquer all, especially love for the cathartic power of music.” AMG
“One of the indie rock community’s most beloved finds of 2004, Arcade Fire are poised to win over even more listeners.” AZ “Funeral still retains its power and beauty years after its release and stands as an important landmark in shining a light on music made in Canada.” PM
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