[review 2007: crimes and misdemeanours]

Easy analogy time: if Funeral was the one-room churchhouse in the middle of the Québécois hinterland during the dead of winter, then Neon Bible is the towering cathedral with giant stained-glass windows, the only material deemed suitable enough to allow the light of God to shine in. It’s an easy analogy not just because of the Arcade Fire’s resemblance to a religious experience distilled into band form, but also because the fucking pipe organ is right there on “Intervention” for all to hear.

Strangely, Neon Bible doesn’t seem to invoke the same sort of feverish devotion Funeral did. I may never have been a true convert myself, but I could understand why you’d lay down your life for songs like “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Wake Up.” Of all the tracks on the new album, the only one that could inspire that same adoration is “No Cars Go,” which is actually one of the band’s earliest songs, re-recorded for Neon Bible. And re-recorded in sufficiently grand fashion, too: for the first time the Arcade Fire has a song that sounds as though it could move heaven and earth on its surges of emotion.

But you can understand why the entire album isn’t just twelve carbon copies of “No Cars Go.” For one, the Arcade Fire can’t simply re-record all their old songs. Putting the entire album into emotional overdrive would be exhausting as well—you can only muster up so much enthusiasm and devotion so many times before you’ve literally got nothing left to give. Pacing, people, pacing. And in fact some of the album’s best songs are the low-key ones, like the title track and “Ocean of Noise.”

Unfortunately there are times when the luminescent quality of all good Arcade Fire songs disappears, and everything falls flat. “Intervention” is the most obvious example, its pipe organ a hugely unwelcome intrusion that turns the first half of the song into an overwrought, flatfooted mess from which the band never fully recovers. Album closer “My Body is a Cage” is a valiant attempt, too, but that doesn’t mean I ever want to listen to it again.

To close with a slightly less obvious analogy, if Funeral was the cult, Neon Bible is the theology—a time for building on the initial religious upswelling with mythology and commandments and all sorts of other celestial housekeeping. Neon Bible is an epic album, more complex and far more ambitious than Funeral ever was. And there is a certain joy in the cathedrals Arcade Fire now seem intent on building. But unless you were already utterly convinced by Funeral you may find Neon Bible a bit of a cipher, and anyone who didn’t like the first album will just feel more like the outsider looking in.