500. Arcade Fire, "Funeral"

 


Oh hey!  Look at me, back on my blogging again.  Last time, as you might recall, it was lots of rambling and Bachelor/ette recaps.  This time, I'm OLDER and MORE FOCUSED and ON MEDICATION so this time around, we're blogging with a singular focus and the focus is this:

I am going to attempt to listen to every album on Rolling Stone's recently released Top 500 list, from 500 to 1, and write something, however small and/or grand, about each one.  

I foresee this taking about the rest of my natural life maybe 2 or 3 years.  I've been wanting to get back into regular writing and fuck it, this is how I'm going to do it.

So we're starting with "Funeral," by Arcade Fire.  I know this album really well, because it was omnipresent among my clique of music nerds in the early aughts.  This album was just so strange compared to the other stuff going on that year.  I just remember how everybody immediately embraced it and loved it.  The songs are all so big-sounding.  They all sound like they were recorded in an abandoned barn with a caravan of gypsies or something.  

It came out in 2004, which was kind of a big year for me personally; I broke up with my later-to-be-ex-wife and met my current-and-god-I-hope-forever wife.  When I was on my way out of my former place I grabbed like 6 CDs and this was one of them, so it got a lot of play that year!  Me and my wife, who was then my girlfriend, would hang out at my new apartment and listen to those CDs and make out or whatever.  I think of it as one of the best times of my life.

I've only seen Arcade Fire live once, across a dusty field at the ACL Festival in Austin in 2005.  They were fine.  I feel like they had their moment?  I guess they're all releasing solo albums now and whatever so maybe they've moved on, just like I have.  I hadn't listened to this album in years until I did again for this project and it immediately took me back to that apartment on Carl Street in 2004.  Music, man.

Comments

  1. the default attorneyOctober 24, 2020 at 5:51 PM

    I lived in what would soon become known as NOPA at the time this came out, and this album will always be 2004-2005 for me. I saw them at the Greek in Berkeley in 2007 and they were pretty amazing. It also gave birth to the best reason to start a blog ever.
    https://acephalous.typepad.com/win-butler-needs-to-give-my-basketball.html

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