“It would be easy to dismiss this idealistic (maybe too idealistic) vision, but it’s exactly this knee-jerk tendency to look down on something honest that the album is fighting against.” — Jonathan Raeder
I first heard Funeral, Arcade Fire’s 10-year-old debut, at the end of the 2000s, during my attempt to evolve my music taste beyond classic rock and a smattering of Britpop. I had stumbled upon the Internet’s vast trove of music blogs and was beginning my descent into a world of music I didn’t even know existed. To me, indie music meant bands that weren’t signed to a major record label and were probably not great — garage groups or weird theremin-wielding hippies. Yet I soon realized the music I had heard before was only the tip of the iceberg that is all music. Reading about and listening to these acclaimed albums, list after list, ranking after ranking, told me Funeral was something worth listening to, something powerful.
I don’t know what I expected. At that time, my idea of a band was limited to the standard four or five people on guitar, drums, bass and vocals. Yet this band was much larger, a collective of talented musicians using instruments I didn’t even know existed, creating a beautiful, frenzied sound unlike anything I’d ever heard. I was fascinated, intrigued and most of all, moved. This was music freed from the conventions I’d grown used to. This was music that said something, that meant something.
Funeral’s impact spread throughout the indie music world, riding the massive wave of Pitchfork-approved hype before and after its release. Canadian indie rock became synonymous with orchestral and energetic musical collectives, such as The New Pornographers and Broken Social Scene. Artists such as Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird and St. Vincent who use violins and other nontraditional rock instruments also received a spike in popularity. Music websites crowned the album with album of the year awards and it even picked up some album of the decade accolades. In my own personal rankings, Funeral occupies a solid position in my top 10 albums of all time.
Funeral is, quite obviously, an album inspired by and about death, yet that description doesn’t do justice to the fervor and life the band crafts. To me, the songs in Funeral, especially the four numbered “Neighborhood” tracks, tell stories of a post-apocalyptic world ruled by kids unburdened by the knowledge of death, confused about everything but also filled with wonder and love. It would be easy to dismiss this idealistic (maybe too idealistic) vision, but it’s exactly this knee-jerk tendency to look down on something honest that the album is fighting against.
In “Wake Up,” arguably the most well-known track, lead singer Win Butler cries, “If the children don’t grow up/ Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up/ We’re just a million little gods causin’ rain storms turnin’ every good thing to rust/ I guess we’ll just have to adjust.” People sing and write about how something in us dies when we become adults, how some wonder and goodness don’t survive after gaining knowledge about death and war and taxes and whatever else forms the adult world. Funeral defies that. A world ruled by children — maybe not actual children but people emotionally open and resilient against anything that tries to erode childlike wonder — would not be such a bad place indeed. Mistakes would happen, yes, but we’d adjust.
All this overwhelming optimism and idealism may make the album sound cloying or childish, and while that childlike wonder is obviously essential to the album, it’s still a thematically and musically rich creation. It has its share of darkness — after all, the album is named Funeral. Maybe that’s what I like so much about it — and any other piece of art that tries to wrestle with conflicting, bittersweet emotions. Life is murky and confusing, and at times we find ourselves feeling elated and depressed, anxious for the good to start and anxious for the bad we know awaits. When it comes down to it, Funeral is just an album, just a collection of 10 songs released 10 years ago by a group of flawed humans. It didn’t change the world, and many people didn’t have the same response to it that I and many others did. That’s OK. I still think the world is just a little bit better because of it.
Arcade Fire has grown into the one of the most recognizable and important bands in the indie music community — it has won a Grammy, sold out massive stadiums, had its songs played at the Super Bowl, created a fantastic soundtrack to a fantastic film (Her) and released four critically acclaimed albums, yet nothing it’s done quite reaches the heights of Funeral. Over time its lyrics morphed to fit a wider audience. It’s become more direct, as opposed to the stories and poetry of the band members’ younger selves. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and the band’s other three albums (Neon Bible, The Suburbs and Reflektor) are all great and worth listening to — yet to me, they can’t top Funeral. Nothing really can.
