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>>For more on the Arcade Fire, check out our exclusive online profiles of all seven band members and an excerpt from the feature in RS1027, on stands until June 1.
"This album has even more threads that hold the songs together,"
says co-writer Regine Chassagne. "But I'd rather people figure it
out on their own. They can do it. They're intelligent." Here's a
few of the threads: Neon Bible is filled with images of
mirrors and a debased culture that reflects us. Taken as a whole,
the album suggests that Americans bear moral responsibility not
only for our wars but for our pop stars. A primer on what's inside
the Neon Bible:
BLACK MIRROR
[Listen]
The album's opener states its themes: "Mirror, mirror, on the
wall/Show me where them bombs will fall."
THE WELL AND THE LIGHTHOUSE
[Listen]
Adapted from a French folk tale, "The Wolf and the Fox." Chassagne
introduced Win Butler to French-language children's literature, and
he thought it'd be interesting to write a sequence of songs based
on these stories with explicit morals. This is the only one that
made the record: A wolf jumps into a well, thinking that the
reflected moon is actually a treasure-trove of silver.
NEON BIBLE
[Listen]
There's also a novel by John Kennedy Toole (author of A
Confederacy of Dunces) called The Neon Bible, but the
band didn't know about it when they named the record. "We picked it
because it's a rich image and there's a lot of interpretations to
it," says Will Butler. "Take the poison of your age," the lyrics
say, implying that our toxin is the worship of bright flickering
lights.
(ANTICHRIST TELEVISION BLUES)
[Listen]
The band also refers to the song as "Joe Simpson," after the
father of Jessica Simpson, the song's "bird in a cage." The song's
narrator proclaims his Christianity but wants to "hold a mirror up
to the world so they can see themselves inside my little
girl."
WINDOWSILL
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"Songs have meaning," Chassagne says. "You have to find that
meaning and work toward it. 'Windowsill' started as a quiet song,
but I was working on it, and added horns and everything. When we
mastered it, I said, 'What happened? This song is so bombastic.'
But you work from the lyrics and use that to inspire you to create
sounds."