I’m a huge fan of the Canadian band Arcade Fire. I’ve been one since roughly 2007 but a lot of folks are only now discovering them thanks to that Grammy win (and subsequent Twitter love from Kanye). Since then, everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. That includes women. I’ve had this discussion once or twice before. Music is a good icebreaker with women and a good music recommendation that’s a bit off mainstream will make you easy to remember. And a strong music opinion will spark a memory of you the next time they hear a song by that band.

So for our first post in a hopefully ongoing series of advice columns for the single man, I help you talk about the Arcade Fire so you sound like you know what you’re talking about and without sounding like you’ve never heard any of their albums from start to finish.

The Arcade Fire Formula

Every band has a certain formula to their big songs. You don’t necessarily have to know who is singing/playing a particular song because some bands have such rigid formulas that you can figure out who it is pretty quickly. For example, listen to a couple of Nickelback songs and your ears will bleed… But you can identify a definite pattern of quiet, loud, loud, quiet, repeat start of song, loud, end.

Arcade Fire songs tend to follow a formula of quiet/soft beginning which gets progressively louder before crescendoing into a big, loud climax. It’s on display in the majority of their songs and it’s a damn fun formula to listen to. Keep that formula in mind if someone wants to argue if all Arcade Fire songs sound the same.

Funeral (2004)

Noteworthy Singles: Rebellion (Lies), Wake Up

Not surprisingly for an album called Funeral, you could easily describe this album as being about life and death and how each permeates through everything everyday. You could also through out thematic buzz words like dark, cold and innocence. The album does have a few thematic/emotional high and low points with the album starting on the dark side before the mood gets more celebratory at the middle before crescendoing at the end. Almost fitting that the album is laid out like that.

The most important thing to know about this album is the song “Wake Up.” You probably saw a trailer or promo for the movie Where The Wild Things Are. The song in there is Wake Up which is the closest thing that Arcade Fire has to a trademark song or anthem. If you listen to radio/TV’s The Dan Patrick Show, it’s also become something of a Friday anthem for that show. U2 is also fond of the song. They’ve played it as an intro song when they came on stage at some concerts. Don’t be surprised if everyone starts screaming/singing at the top of their lungs when it comes on.

If you want to take the advice of Metacritic, Funeral is the best of the three Arcade Fire albums by a whole 3%. So there’s always the option to call this one the best and/or your favourite Arcade Fire album.

Neon Bible (2007)

Noteworthy Singles: Keep The Car Running, No Cars Go

This is where Arcade Fire got some attention. High profile uses of the song “No Cars Go” on Fox Sports NFL coverage (including the Super Bowl) and BBC’s Top Gear exposed Arcade Fire to larger audiences than ever before. No Cars Go is really the highlight from this one. You can’t sing along to it the same way you could with Wake Up from Funeral but the bass line, beat, strings, brass and accordions make this one the stand out song on this album.

Neon Bible starts a lot darker than Funeral with the brooding Black Mirror. The sound does get a little less depressing from there but the lyrics are best described as filled with guilt and despair. The music might not necessarily reflect that, though. Listen to the lyrics of Keep The Car Running which is far too upbeat for the lyrics as an example. It’s this complex juxtaposition of the lyrics and music that makes this such a great album. There’s a reason that you haven’t heard these on those pop stations that only play the same ten songs all the time.

I often like to cite Neon Bible as the best of the three Arcade Fire albums. The fact that it’s my favourite should probably indicate some bias on my part but keep in mind that a slightly contrary view will make an impression. Metacritic says it’s as good as The Suburbs (87/100) but not as good as Funeral. Just more fuel for the contrarian fire if you say Neon Bible is the best and/or your favourite Arcade Fire album.

The Suburbs (2010)

Noteworthy Singles: Ready to Start, We Used to Wait

From start to finish, Suburbs is probably the strongest of the three albums. By start to finish, I mean that as a collective story to be listened to as a whole album in one sitting, it’s the strongest album. While it’s a good album, there aren’t the memorable songs that punctuated Funeral and Neon Bible. This album was really written as a whole and while there are some good songs on here, nothing stands out from this album like No Cars Go did from the rest of Neon Bible, for example.

While The Suburbs works as a whole album, there is an amazing amount of contrast between songs. You have songs driven by ragtime piano, guitar, more subdued piano, 80’s style synthesizers, bass, drums and strings but each song seems to have a unique combination of the above. For example, in the middle of the album, Month of May is the closest thing to a traditional rock song on The Suburbs but gives way immediately to Wasted Hours’ quiet acoustic guitar. This album is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

As for the tone of The Suburbs (and stop me if you’ve heard it before), it’s dark. The best buzzwords I can think of are foreboding, lamenting and guilt. It’s very similar to Funeral in terms of theme but it never hits that high note that Funeral slowly build to and eventually crescendoed with Wake Up. But on the whole, this album is slightly more restrained than the previous two. I guess that means you can use “mature” as another buzzword in describing this album.

With women, making an impression and doing something memorable is half the battle. Even if it’s only pretending to know something about this new band that they like, they’re likely to remember it. Of course every guy is going to like Arcade Fire if she likes them. They’re probably going to like The Suburbs because that’s the only Arcade Fire stuff she’s familiar with thanks to their recent Grammy success. Make the impression by talking about the older stuff of her new favourite band and she’ll remember you the next time they come up on her iPod.

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