Stumbling upon the Neon Bible at an Arcade Fire

Stumbling upon the Neon Bible at an Arcade Fire

In my journey as a music connoisseur it never ceases to amaze me how I have been introduced to new music. I have a pretty open ear for new music (or at least new to me if it’s something older). My family, friends, and coworkers are always glad to send something new my way, even if it’s something I clearly won’t be into. Word of mouth is still how I discover a lot of new music and since the advent of youtube.com, surfing around for new music has never been better. However, there have been a few rare instances when for reasons that I cannot exactly pin point, I will buy some new music on a total whim knowing next to nothing about the band or their music. For the most part the result has been “what was I thinking?” However, once in a great while I will discover something completely amazing, as was the case when I bought ‘Neon Bible’ by Arcade Fire.

Back in 2007 I had some time to burn and I ended up at Best Buy thumbing through the CD’s and I saw about 20 copies of ‘Neon Bible’ in Arcade Fire’s section. I thought to myself “Arcade Fire? That’s an interesting name”, but I did not know anything about them and I just kept thumbing through the CD’s. For whatever reason I just could not get Arcade Fire out of my mind, I couldn’t find any other CD’s that looked appealing, and after a very intense “should I or shouldn’t I buy it” war inside my head that went on for at least a half hour, I bought ‘Neon Bible’ because I thought Arcade Fire was a unique band name, the cover art looked cool, and I just could not suppress the urge to buy it.

I started to drive around Salt Lake City with ‘Neon Bible’ playing on my car stereo and ‘Black Mirror’ came on. Initially, I did not really know what to make of what was coming over my stereo; it has strings, a deep drum beat, and piano going on. The album had my attention. ‘Keep the Car Running’ was really catchy and folky and the music was starting to grow on me. ‘Neon Bible’ just kept getting better and better and I was completely blown away by the time the CD got to ‘No Cars Go’. I had never heard anything like this in my life. It was very unique. I started the CD over, gave it another listen, and kept driving around Salt Lake County. The second time through I felt like I was listening to a masterpiece. I was completely floored by the discovery of Arcade Fire.

I immediately started introducing Arcade Fire to my network of music freaks. The first question is always what do they sound like? For the first time in my life I was at a complete loss for words. There was no way I could describe this band in a way that would make sense to others.  Arcade Fire just have to be experienced. I was fully expecting my friends to be completely blown away by Arcade Fire. To my surprise the general reaction was either A) “I ain’t feeling it”, B) “I don’t know what to make of these guys”, or C) “This music is kind of out there”. I was a little disappointed that no one was catching the vision.

As time went by, some of friends discovered Arcade Fire. For my older brother ‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’ is what got his attention, for another good friend ‘Wake Up’ blew him away and as Arcade Fire was slowly generating more buzz, more of friends slowly but surely had the experience I had with Arcade Fire. It just took a little them a little longer.

The song that has captured me the most on ‘Neon Bible’ is ‘No Cars Go’. To me, this song describes a place where I can totally be at peace, regardless of what is happening around me. Back in 2010 due to some personality conflicts and political issues I was having serious problems at work. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to just drag myself out of bed to go to my job. For the most part I am a very upbeat and positive person, but I was so down that even the people I was working with were starting to worry about me and they were trying really hard to help me cheer up, but I was really low. One day everything just came to a head. Things were so awful this particular day that during my break I went to my car, locked the door, and yelled for 15 minutes just so I could get it together for the rest of the day. To add insult to injury I had left my car lights on and my battery was totally dead. All of my coworkers have already left so there was no one nearby to give my car a jump. I was so upset that I just couldn’t bring myself to call anyone for help, so I decided to walk from home to the Avenues from Rose Park, which ended up taking me close to three hours. When I was about half way home and walking through downtown Salt Lake City ‘No Cars Go’ started to play on my iPod and I sang with it with all of my heart and as loud as I could. I’m sure there were people that thought “there’s another crazy person roaming downtown”, but I didn’t care. ‘No Cars Go’ was able to comfort me when nothing else could. I ended up listening to it another 6 or 7 times as I continued to walk back to my apartment. It was exactly what I needed and since then ‘No Cars Go’ has become one of my “cheer up and hold your head high” songs for when I am having a rough time.

‘Neon Bible’ in my opinion is one of the best albums to come out in the last ten years and now with Arcade Fire’s Grammy for Album of the Year for ‘The Suburbs’, the rest of the world is now starting to discover Arcade Fire. I am glad that Arcade Fire is not afraid to create music that is just so different from anything that is currently out there. Arcade Fire one of the best accidental musical discoveries I have ever made.