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Arcade Fire: Difference between revisions
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{{
{{quote|''"I don't wanna work in a building downtown, I don't wanna see all the planes hit the ground..."''
|'''Arcade Fire''', "[[Intentionally Awkward Title|(Antichrist Television]] [[Something Blues|Blues)]]"}}
[[File:arcade-fire-2_6646.jpg|frame|Us kids know.]]
'''Arcade Fire''', sometimes misnomered as "
▲Arcade Fire, sometimes misnomered as "'''[[Spell My Name With a "The"|The]]''' Arcade Fire" <ref>Maybe not. The band has introduced themselves at live shows as The Arcade Fire, but the album art always says Arcade Fire. Oh, and just to make things more confusing, the booklet for ''The Suburbs'' has ''both'' spellings. While the jury's out on this one, please scrobble their music under "Arcade Fire" if you have a last.fm account.</ref> , are a Canadian indie rock band formed in Montreal in 2003 by American brothers Win and Will Butler and Win's Haitian-born Quebecois wife Regine Chassagne, among others. Since that time they've acquired a reputation for dynamic live shows and have [[Colbert Bump|several famous fans]]. [[U 2|Bono]] and [[Talking Heads (Music)|David Byrne]] have both sung their praises, and they've performed live with [[David Bowie]], [[U 2]] and [[Bruce Springsteen]].
The band is also known for doing things that would normally destroy a band's reputation, but somehow getting away with their reputation unscathed. They constantly change their sound between albums (and in one case between an EP and an album), which always splits their fanbase, and they had a feud with [[Flaming Lips]] member Wayne Coyne.
The band's third album, ''The Suburbs'', was awarded the 2011 [[Grammy Award|Grammy]] for Album of the Year, which many music writers claim is a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]] for the band, their label Merge Records, and the indie rock genre as a whole.
Wikipedia has [[w:Arcade Fire discography|a more complete list]].
* ''Arcade Fire'' (Demo recorded in 2003 and released commercially in 2005)
* ''Funeral'' (2004)
* ''Neon Bible'' (2007)
* ''The Suburbs'' (2010, [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition|2011]])
* ''Reflektor'' (2013)
* ''Everything Now'' (2017)
* While not an official AF release, Win, Regine and band associate Owen Pallett recorded music for Richard Kelly's ''[[The Box]]'' (2009)
* They also recorded a track, "Abraham's Daughter", for the soundtrack of [[The Hunger Games]] movie.
----
{{creatortropes}}
* [[After the End]]: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)".
* [[Album Title Drop]]: Even discounting the ''two'' title tracks, ''The Suburbs'' is full of this.
** To be fair, the album's setting does take place in the suburbs, so it's not a excuse to drop the title of it repeatedly.
** While the band formed in Canada, Win Butler and his brother and bandmate William were born and raised in the suburbs <ref>Big surprise, right?</ref> of Houston, Texas. Regine Chassagne, on the other hand, was born and raised in the suburbs of Montréal.
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* [[Concept Album]]: All of their albums have at least shades of this: ''Funeral'' focuses on aging, loss, and community; ''Neon Bible'' is darker and fixates on the apocalypse and religion, with television and the ocean also used as motifs; and you get one guess as to what ''The Suburbs'' [[Suburbia|is about]].
* [[Costume Porn]]: Men in the band tend to look like 19th century farmers. Women wear ball gowns and opera gloves that seem to be a similar vintage. They've more or less abandoned this look recently for a modern semi-formal look while promoting the ''The Suburbs''.
* [[Dark Reprise]]: "Suburban War" for "The Suburbs."
* [[The Eleven O'Clock Number]]: Not ''exactly,'' but all three albums have perhaps their most epic songs as the penultimate tracks: "Rebellion (Lies)" on ''Funeral'', "No Cars Go" from ''Neon Bible'', and "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" off ''The Suburbs.''
** Weirdly, however, the vinyl version ''and only'' the vinyl version of ''The Suburbs'' does away with this, as the second-to-last track is ''not'' "Sprawl II," but the more mournful "Suburban War."
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* [[Fading Into the Next Song]]: "Haiti" into "Rebellion (Lies)" on ''Funeral.''
* [[Growing Up Sucks]]: "In the Backseat."
* [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition]]: One for ''The Suburbs'' was released with an extended version of "Wasted Hours" (subtitled "A Life We Can Live"), two new tracks ("Culture War" and "Speaking in Tongues", the latter featuring David Byrne), a DVD including [[Spike Jonze]]'s ''Scenes from the Suburbs'' film and extras, and a booklet.
* [[Love At First Note]]: Win first met Regine when she was singing jazz at an art gallery. Taking this trope [[Up to Eleven]], they wrote a song together ("Headlights Look Like Diamonds") on their very first date.
* [[Lyrical Cold Open]]: "Crown of Love," "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations."
* [[Lyrical Dissonance]]: Almost all of their songs sound ecstatically joyful on the surface, but many have [[Fridge Horror|darker undertones]], none more jarring than "Intervention":
{{quote|
Will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan
We'll go at it alone }}
* [[Meaningful Echo]]: Lots and lots of it on ''The Suburbs''.
* [[Miniscule Rocking]]: "The Suburbs (Continued)" is the band's shortest song.
* [[The Movie]]: ''Scenes From The Suburbs'' is one for...''The Suburbs'', with Spike Jonze directing.
* [[Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly]]: As eclectic as you'd expect a rock band with an accordionist (Regine) and string section to be. Their live shows have been described as like "a [[The Clash|Clash]] concert hijacked by the [[Cirque Du Soleil]]."
* [[Rearrange the Song]]: "The song" in this case being "No Cars Go," a tune from their self-titled EP. [[Crowning Music of Awesome|They did a pretty good job with it, too.]]
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* [[Signature Song]]: "Rebellion (Lies)" is the most obvious, though "Wake Up," "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)," and "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" would probably also qualify.
* [[Something Blues]]: Of the "(Antichrist Television)" variety.
* [[Stage Mom|Stage Dad]]: "(Antichrist Television Blues)" The track is rumored to have been originally titled "Joe Simpson (Antichrist Television Blues)", meant as a direct attack at the father of Jessica Simpson and his exploitation of his daughter's sexuality while stating that he's a very religious man.
* [[Stepford Suburbia]]: Touched on in (what else?) ''The Suburbs''.
* [[Suspiciously Similar Song]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EagGQtdy--U&feature=player_embedded Does this commercial for Microsoft sound familiar to you?]
** Delta Goodrem has been accused of ripping off "Rebellion (Lies)". [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-Tbd0LRPw&ob=av2n Judge for yourself].
* [[Teens Are Monsters]]: Largely averted. Their songs tend to portray teens in a sympathetic light. Some songs on ''The Suburbs,'' most notably "Rococo" and "Month of May", do include a few [[Take That]]s at "the kids", but are still a long way from portraying them as monsters, though.
▲*** "Rococo" is basically all about the kids in today's world who were raised to be cynical and proud, [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|trying to impress people with their large vocabulary]] and hating everything about popular culture. In other words, hipsters. In other other words, people who listen to Arcade Fire.
▲*** Somehow the hipsters that it was aimed at ate it right on up without realizing that the track was aimed specifically at them. No one knows if it's just that they're socially smart, or they just dodge all of these by sheer coincidence.
* [[Unperson]]: From "Intervention:" "And when you finally disappear, they'll say you were never here."
* [[Wham! Line]]: From "(Antichrist Television Blues)": "I'm through being cute/I'm through being nice/Oh tell me Lord/Am I the Antichrist?"
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{{reflist}}
{{Grammy Award for Album of the Year}}
[[Category:Musicians]]▼
{{Polaris Music Prize}}
[[Category:Turn of the Millennium/Music]]▼
[[Category:
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▲[[Category:Musicians of the 2010s]]
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