对于文化评论员来说，不断的强迫是将经常将历史变化的经常微妙层次组织成到明确定义的时代的尝试。音乐是一个途径太频繁的途径，导致对某些艺术家是否进入某些动作的无尽分歧，如果没有，他们只是在哪里fit? Though, in reality, there is much less collectivist thinking than the history writers imply, there are still those moments where it seems the wider consciousness of culture and music comes to something fairly close to alignment.
9/11后的时期是一个特殊的例子，因为西方世界的共同创伤在艺术中渗透了，而对恐怖战争则暴发了海外。到2004年，它的阴影不可避免。在电影院，迈克尔·摩尔的Fahrenheit 9/11还有特雷·帕克（Trey Parker）和马特·斯通（Matt Stone）美国队：世界警察dismantled those starkly defined ‘good vs evil’ narratives which were disseminated by the coalition, while on television,Lost’s onion layers of tense mystery ambiguously teased the promise of profound clarity. Meanwhile, much pop music of the time seemed content with shutting out the uncertainty of the 21st century, keeping an oblivious party going, and mainstream rock generally either still leaned towards the push-and-shove strop of the teenager-baiting nu-metal, or the detached leather-clad cool of New York garage rock.
Many were eager to be hoisted out of this all-pervading gloom. At the tail end of 2004, a six-piece troupe of bohemian (and quite eerie-looking) young Canadians, turned the tide, with the release of their grimly titled debut,Funeral。Stacked with powerhouse anthems of titanic, cinematic scope, its release beckoned a rapturous new dawn for indie rock.
A musical smorgasbord,Funeral’s diverse instrumental flavours (which constituted accordion, xylophone, piano and recorder amongst others) provided a perfect bed for the band’s front-couple – Win Butler and Régine Chassagne – to deliver some breathtaking vocal performances, while some vibrantly expressed guitar work covered spindly leads, beefy driving chords and delicately constructed acoustic arpeggios.
Shooting sparks
“我12岁那年殴打我的第一个孩子是一个高中生，他一直在谈论旧街机的燃烧以及所有这些孩子都死了……”Gothamistenquired how the band acquired its striking moniker. First formed in 2001 by Butler and longtime friend Josh Deu as a vehicle for exploring songwriting,拱廊之火’sroute to the big leagues truly started with the addition of the gifted creative (and Butler’s future wife) Régine Chassagne, whom the pair met while she was using one of Josh’s university’s shared rehearsal spaces. Striking a fast bond, Régine began co-singing with Win on the early material.
尽管Deu在成功之前就离开乐队，但Win和Régine的合作伙伴关系会追求不断发展的声音，该声音吸引了民间，乡村和独立摇滚，由越来越不断扩展的音乐家，朋友，朋友和蒙特利尔的同伴误会。尽管不可避免的后果导致了巴特勒与稳定集体之间的无数争议，但这些挫折只能牢牢地锻造那些留下来的Arcade Fire的成员，以成为一个强大的创意实体。一项此类争议导致当时的吉他手和鼓手戴恩·米尔斯（Dane Mills）与Win的弟弟William转换。
Early indications of the staggering aural majesty that the band could reach were manifold on the group’s debut EPUs Kids Now(AKA, the拱廊之火EP). Opening with the jangling arpeggios of旧火焰，chassagne领导的异想天开的声学人The Woodlands National Anthemand the multi-sectioned build ofVampires/Forest Fire, the EP proved a quick seller at Arcade Fire’s live shows – now shaping up as less conventional gigs and more thronging avant garde rallies, with frequent instrument switching adding to the group’s freestyle ethos.
Lift those heavy eyelids
不久之后，乐队就开始制作他们的第一张全长专辑，但是一系列情感上的动荡将为该项目的心情提供信息，尤其是其标题。首先，巴特勒的祖父（著名的美国爵士吉他手和乐队负责人阿尔维诺·雷伊（Alvino Rey））和查萨格（Chassagne）的祖母一样去世。这种共同的悲伤，再加上这对夫妇的强烈创意纽带，使他们于2003年结婚，不久之后，乐队的多乐器主义者理查德·里德·帕里（Richard Reed Parry）的姑姑也去世了。这些失去的家庭成员将在首次亮相中流连忘返。巴特勒回忆起Red Bull Music Academy，该乐队去世后进入了他已故的祖父的家庭工作室“他开了一个专业工具会议，他正在用八度踏板录制自己，做贝斯线，用吉他制作低音。录制自己的音乐。他几乎发明了第一把电吉他的第一个原型。他修改了踏板吉他。在30年代使用了Vocoder的原始版本。他是一个非常未来派的家伙。他给我买了我的第一把吉他。记录称为Funeral部分原因是参加他的葬礼的经验。”
Though the group’s trademark instrument switching was a thrilling element of their live shows, in the studio the refined six piece settled into generally more stable duties, with Win Butler covering rhythm guitar and vocals, Regine focusing on vocals, keyboards, accordion and percussion, Richard Reed Parry providing lead guitar and adding occasional bass, William Butler providing synth, Tim Kingsbury on bass and studio owner Howard Bilerman on drums. Other instruments in the mix included organ, xylophone, double bass and (a lot of) violins.
At this stage the bulk of Butler’s guitar arsenal was made up mainly of挡泥板, including a black Jaguar, a surf-green Jazzmaster and 72’ Fender电视广播员custom, while a 12-string brown walnut吉布森ES-335用于曲目的隆隆动力和弦，该曲目被视为专辑的核心，先验Wake Up。Richard introduced the jangle of aRickenbacker330，虽然MosriteCelebrity Hollowbody was also alternated on occasion, such as the album’s cinematic opener邻里#1 (Tunnels)。
与他们的现场表演一样，巴特勒很乐意与理查德和蒂姆一起换低音，三人绕过Mosrite Joe Maphis Mark X Bass以及Gibson Ripper Bass。尽管这些角色不一定是完全满意的，但“理查德是贝斯手，他弹奏吉他。”巴特勒告诉水瓶座周刊, “Tim is basically a guitar player and he plays mostly bass. For whatever reason, there’s a certain kind of energy that we’ve found playing something we’re not intimately familiar with that tends to translate to just a different kind of sound when we all come together and play.”
2003年8月，Arcade Fire在Bilerman的All-Analogue Hotel2tango Studios中预订了一周的录音，Arcade Fire最终确定了歌曲的形状。专辑的上半场将由四部分组成邻里一系列链接的曲目，从华丽，热情洋溢的膨胀开始邻里#1 (Tunnels)这导致了巴黎的朋克邻居＃2（Laïka）, a nod to the heartbreaking tale of the first dog in space, the eponymous Laïka. Next came a bridging track, the candlelit poignancy ofUne Annѐe sans Lumiére, which framed a sensitively delivered French vocal amid a gentle tide of acoustic arpeggios, played on aMartinCutaway. Though these three opening tracks were exceptional listens, their shared mood of wintery outsiderdom, and that ever-present cloud of sorrow hanging over them would be decimated by the frenetic third section of the Neighbourhood cycle,邻居＃3（电力输出）was a dizzying indicator of the group’s ability to summon up lightning-paced riffs and delirious menace when required. The verse’s central drop D riff, recorded with Butler’s Jaguar and Reed Parry’s Rickenbacker 330, evoked a frenzied, oddball paranoia that gave way to a slower, string-dominated chorus. Finally, the邻里sequence ends with the reflective邻里#4 (7 Kettles)，绘制了一个像邪教般的小镇的令人震惊的图片，巴特勒（Butler）哀叹窗帘缠身的邻居“燃烧所有的老人，女巫和骗子”，这是郊区，孤立的恐怖灭绝的主题。该排列由植根于g的圆形的，钟状的声学图案引起。D和开放的G字符串的逐渐流被D字符串上的3-2-1模式反复推动，作为一个开放的音符，f♯和g按摩经文旋律。
在下面查看！
The album’s recording got underway at Howard Bilerman’s 24-track analogue recording studio, Hotel2Tango, with the group’s fierce independence spurring them to self-produce, using reels of sometimes used tape as opposed to a digital DAW, something which lent the recordings a vintage warmth. In a one-week whirlwind session, the band laid down the record’s ten tracks, with the second half of the album delivering on the rising promise of the first. The weary heartbreak ofCrown of Love以及查萨格（Chassagne）的声学paean的浮力春天，她的家，海地，都是扎实的补充，这张专辑的Closer，The Dreamy，In The Backseat。但Funeral’s (and, arguably the band’s) defining tracks gradually grew from relatively simple beginnings, into a pair of era-soundtracking behemoths.
Built around a rallying charge of a repetitive 335 strum on C, overdriven with a touch of ProCo Rat distortion, the soaring euphoria ofWake Upwould become Arcade Fire’s timeless showpiece. With a verse lyric lamenting the break-up of an early incarnation of the band, it’s the magnificent multi-tracked wail of the chorus that would make the song so universally beloved. “Wake Up仍然是他们的电话卡”守护者reflected, “grippingly charged with emotions and built to be sung back by tens of thousands.” The other key cut, the idealisticRebellion (Lies)was driven by a bass chug rooted in A♯. The arrangement grows out with tweedy buzzes of Butler’s Jaguar, while Reed Parry adds a smattering of Rickenbacker chimes to build the song from simple garage rock beginnings to a full-blown parade by its end.
尘归尘
Though it was preceded by a considerable buzz from journalists in the know, and those fortunate enough to have seen the band’s outlandish early performances, whenFuneral于2004年9月14日通过独立标签合并发布。它超过了所有期望。很明显，Arcade Fire的首次亮相确实很特别。“拥抱这张专辑的《爱与救赎》的歌剧宣言非常容易说明了街机之火的愿景的范围。”写Pitchfork, “It’s taken perhaps too long for us to reach this point where an album is at last capable of completely and successfully restoring the tainted phrase “emotional” to its true origin.” While a mind-blownNME写道：“对于那些仍然相信音乐赎回力量的人，Funeral感觉像排毒，年度最宣泄的专辑”
It wasn’t just the press that were stirred, the ever-astuteDavid Bowiewas a notable admirer, who – in a few short months – would have a big hand in granting the group wider exposure, following a surprising, wonderful performance ofWake Up在2005年的时尚岩石上穿着衣服。鲍伊告诉滚石, “They meld everything from early Motown, French chanson and Talking Heads through to theCurein a kaleidoscopic dizzy sort of rush. I bought a huge stack of theFuneralCD last September and gave them to all my friends. I made so many converts.”
Reshaping indie rock as a dazzling spectrum of colour in contrast to the drab, ‘too-cool-for-school’ monochrome of many of their 2004 contemporaries, the release ofFuneralsaw the band’s off-the-wall sound explode into the public consciousness. By the year’s end, the euphoricWake Upechoed from student dormitories to baseball games, from indie club nights to shopping malls.
Funeral只是街机消防故事的第一章。他们当然会继续，从2007年的Shadowy of Shadowy中，以蘑菇的灿烂为基础，建立在这个早期的水标上Neon Bible, the sprawling, high concept郊区in 2010, 2013’s electronically-tingedReflektor以及2017年的传染性复古合成器流行音乐现在一切。Though a high quality bar has been maintained,Funeral仍然是乐队的定义声明。它的许多欢欣鼓舞的高潮虽然充满了他们共同的个人悲伤，但仍在继续引起新的听众到今天。
Infobox
拱廊之火,Funeral，（合并/粗糙贸易，2004年）
学分
- Win Butler – vocals, electric, acoustic and bass guitars, piano, synths,
- Régine Chassagne – vocals, drums, synths, piano, accordion, xylophone, recorders, percussion
- Richard Reed Parry – electric guitar, synths, organ, piano, accordion, xylophone, percussion, double bass
- Tim Kingsbury – bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar
- Howard Bilerman – drums, guitar
- 威廉·巴特勒（William Butler） - 低音，木琴，合成器，打击乐器
- 由Arcade Fire生产
杰出的吉他时刻
邻居＃3（电力输出）
For more reviews, click这里。