So, I was sitting around my house thinking about how much more subdued Neon Bible seems, compared to The Arcade Fire’s first album. Then it suddenly occurred to me that they’ve always been quite downbeat. That first album was called Funeral, for fuck’s sake! I guess I’ve just never thought about it before, all I hear is the arm-waving euphoria in the sound of songs like Wake Up.

Now that I have given it proper thought, I like The Arcade Fire all the more. That their songs can tackle dark topics whilst simultaneous offering hope, even joy, seems perfect. And that feel does still exist on Neon Bible, if not quite so obviously at first.

This is an album that creeps, rather than slaps, but it’ll still get you in the end. After three listens you’ll have begun to peel back the layers that make it. As ever, there is a huge assortment of different instruments from the accordion on strings synonymous with this band to the church pipe organ on Intervention and closing track My Body Is A Cage.

First single, Keep The Car Running is the closest song to the first album and, as such, is also the furthest away. It plays with tension, promising constantly to build into something bigger, only to pull back sharply at the last moment. Similar, though this time making no promises and just getting on with it, is No Cars Go, a new recording of a song from the band’s debut EP, the album’s most urgent song, on which drums and bass rush up behind the other instruments as they scrabble to get away.

On Black Wave / Bad Vibrations, the band are at their most Baroque, perhaps even Gothic. Régine Chassagne opens the song with dramatic use of a minor key, before Win Butler crashes in and takes over halfway through, taking the song down to the rocks, where the waves crash over it and threaten to pull it under.

This album could so easily have been a disaster, but The Arcade Fire have lost none of what made them great before and developed it into something even more special. Neon Bible may initially seem subdued in comparison to its predecessor, but now I’ve had the chance to really get into it, I’m not sure it is, it’s just more subtle. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel and the journey there, however dark, is always exciting.

The real euphoria this time comes from the realisation that The Arcade Fire have surpassed themselves with a more complete, more fluid, more amazing album than the last.

Label: Sonovox
Website: www.arcadefire.com
Release date: 5th March 2007

Tracklist:

1. Black Mirror
2. Keep The Car Running
3. Neon Bible
4. Intervention
5. Black Wave / Bad Vibrations
6. Ocean Of Noise
7. The Well And The Lighthouse
8. (Antichrist Television Blues)
9. Windowsill
10. No Cars Go
11. My Body Is A Cage