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Talking 'Bible' with the Arcade FirePopWire: News, Reviews and Commentaryby Chris RiemenschneiderStar Tribune (Minneapolis) (MCT) 2 October 2007Five months after the Arcade Fire issued its second album, “Neon Bible,” the dramatic Canadian ensemble has cemented itself as one of rock’s most vital new bands—albeit a peculiar one. The record is immediately alluring but hopelessly ambiguous. It’s an oftentimes dark and apocalyptic masterpiece, full of pipe organ and strings and cryptic lyrics that mine everything from religious zealotry to America’s lingering fearfulness to MTV tweenybopper fame. Don’t look for the band’s enigmatic frontman, Win Butler, to explain it all, though. Both he and his wife and chief collaborator, Regine Chassagne, remain elusive interview subjects. Drummer Jeremy Gara, who often stands in for them on the phone, called from their hometown of Montreal last month to fill us in on what he could about his band.
On the tour schedule:
“We’re kind of right at the point where we’re starting to get a little weary of it,” Gara said. “This next American tour is going to be fun, though, because it’s to a lot of cities we haven’t played on this trip yet. Just the size of the shows is kind of daunting now. The U.K. tour is going to be at least mentally something to overcome, because it’s all in arenas—big venues, and not particularly nice venues.”
On “Neon Bible” sales:
“The whole financing and selling of albums is a mystery to us. It was hard with this one. When `Funeral’ came out, they just pressed like 10,000 copies and that was it, at first. It was totally bizarre how much it wound up selling, because it never really exploded, but it never really died. It just consistently kept selling. With this one, there was a huge investment made on Merge’s part to make sure there were like 200,000 copies right off the bat. But then we had to make sure we really marketed it so it did sell. So in that sense, we are happy—or even just relieved—that it has been selling.”
On touring with 10:
“Even when we were just six people and Win was in school, it was hectic from the beginning for us trying to make everybody’s schedules fit. Now, it’s more fun, especially now that we have buses. The family is bigger. And there are more options of who you can hang out with. Inevitably, a few people are going to go out and have fun one night and a few are going to go to bed. There’s enough to choose which you’re gonna do.”
On their personalities:
“Some people have this idea what we’re like as people just because of the music. That’s totally the wrong impression. Really, it is a big social group of friends. It’s just constant jokes and messing around. It’s pretty lighthearted. The intensity on stage is a whole different thing from the rest of the time we’re together. It’s not a negative bunch of people by any stretch of imagination.”
On their Texan frontman:
“Lyrically, it definitely has some influence on the vocabulary. He’s not a particularly super-religious guy. But the culture of religion in Texas is obviously very different than it is up here. (In Montreal) it’s not so much part of a social fabric. In Texas, even if you aren’t all that religious, it’s still a big part of life.”
On Jessica Simpson’s dad:
“It could be about other people, too, but it definitely applies to that family’s dynamic. We haven’t heard from their camp at all, which is great, because some people we’ve worked with have worked with them and said you definitely don’t want to cross them.”
On retreading “No Cars Go”:
“We started recording the album last November. We had a new studio space and all this new gear, so we just needed to start with something that was easy for us to play so we could get used to everything else. `No Cars Go’ had changed so much on tour from how we originally recorded it. The version on the EP is cool but it’s a mess, and the version we had been touring with was way more of a straight-up rock song. So there was always talk of redoing it. And now that we had more of a budget, we wanted to record it with the string arrangements that Regine had always envisioned.”
On the next album:
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