This 'Arcade' deserves a second token

It's difficult to compare the Arcade Fire's great new album, Neon Bible, to its first because it is not a band with a clear, consistent sound. Instead, the songs on its first album, Funeral, were united by their emotional content (most reviews included the word "cathartic" somewhere, though some preferred to call it something like a sense of urgency). Although the album, recorded in the wake of familial losses that band members had just experienced, was a farewell to youth and whatever that entails, and nearly all the songs addressed that one subject thematically, it was stylistically disparate.

Impressive arrangements and instrumentation were common to all these songs, and lead singer and songwriter Win Butler's voice added weight to every track. Butler's voice is awesome, and he is able to switch from quiet intensity to passionate desperation almost instantly. When he sings with all his strength, it's quite something - see the latter half of "Intervention" or Funeral's "Neighborhood 2 (Laika)," among others.

Thematically, Neon Bible ventures into Springsteen territory, with tales of characters down on their luck, appealing to higher powers to help them, desperate for a way out. "Any idea where I was at your age? / I was working downtown for the minimum wage / And I'm not gonna let you just throw it all away / I'm through being cute, I'm through being nice / Oh tell me, Lord, am I the Antichrist?" Butler yells at the end of "(Antichrist Television Blues)." Even on that somewhat conventional song, Butler's voice, combined with the melodramatic lyric and the theatrical flourish before an abrupt and unresolved end, illustrates just how thrilling the band can be, even in weaker songs.

But a discussion of weaker songs is irrelevant, because the album has plenty of strong songs; "Keep the Car Running" is about as good as the album gets, and it really does recall something like Born to Run-era Springsteen. The song pounds forward with a heavy drum backbeat that drops out at selected times for dramatic effect, and the instruments and Butler's voice slowly increase in intensity throughout. The instrumentation is perfect, with some trademark violin flourishes, and the effect is very different from the explosive catharsis of songs like "Wake Up," because where they might reach fever pitch, "Keep the Car Running" just cuts off, leaving the listener on edge.

There are other standout tracks, too. "No Cars Go" is a song from the Arcade Fire's first EP, and it fits in nicely here - although the lyrics may fit better among older material (with lines like "Us kids know"), the song is much like "Keep the Car Running" in the way it chugs forward. "Ocean of Noise" opens with some ominous thunder sound effects, then just features Butler backed by sparse piano and a soft guitar riff. It slowly builds up, but by the end, it has reached its climax, with a pretty piano part and a horn section.

One way in which Neon Bible differs from Funeral is its unity as an album. Funeral cohered quite well, but individual songs stood out. Many of these got airplay on alternative radio stations, but outside of "Keep the Car Running," it's hard to imagine many of these songs making it onto the radio. A lot of them experiment with strange structures, and many, like "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" and "The Well and the Lighthouse" center on quick changes like the one near the end of "Wake Up."

Within the album is an interesting dynamic both between songs and within songs, and this is part of what makes Neon Bible a very worthy and quite compelling follow-up to the beloved Funeral. A-