Arcade Fire: Best Of 2007

This has been what you might call a "banner year" for Montreal's Arcade Fire. The band dropped their long-awaited follow-up to 2004's stunning Funeral on March 6. Neon Bible debuted at #1 on the Canadian sales chart and, most impressively, at #2 on the Billboard 200 chart in the U.S. (where it was beaten only by a long dead and overrated rapper). That's an astounding feat for a Canadian band, let alone an independent Canadian band.

The group then embarked on a series of sold-out tours that took them around the globe and to dozens of European festival main-stages. The quality of Neon Bible made them a finalist for the Polaris Music Prize, though their success all but precluded a win (the award eventually went to fellow Montrealler Patrick Watson). Canada's biggest DIY band deftly navigated that precariously thin line between mainstream success and indie cred — without sacrificing either.

When Chart spoke with Arcade Fire guitarist Richard Reed Parry this past May, he shed some light on how surprising their success has been.

"For a while, we had this plan to try and just go be a bar band," noted Parry. "Like in New York or something like that, before the band got as popular as it is now."

Having progressed well above the status of whiskey-soaked denizens of some dive in Chelsea, Arcade Fire's swirling, melodious and often incendiary leitmotifs have proven that Funeral wasn't a one-off fluke.

Part of what makes their success so phenomenal is that in an era of band- endorsed ringtones, clothing lines and liquor brands, they've resolutely stuck to their DIY roots and relied on the music to sell the band. They produce their records themselves and subsequently license their music for distribution to their North Carolina-based label, Merge, affording them complete control of what their songs are used for (in a minor scandal, their strict no-compilation policy kept them off of the Polaris sampler). The band converted a church outside of Montreal into a studio to record Neon Bible, and the space helped ferment the sounds that made up the record.

"This is the first time where the sound of the place where we recorded it in, like, just really took the thing to the next level," said Parry about the church.

Their music inspired a plethora of fansites, an outpouring of support for
frontman Win Butler when he had to nix a series of shows in late March to treat an insidious sinus infection, and extreme lengths by rabid devotees to see them in concert. But accolades from fellow artists are something altogether different.

When Win Butler and Regine Chassagne joined Bruce Springsteen during his encore in Ottawa (which included Arcade Fire's "Keep The Car Running"), it punctuated an already impressive list of onstage collaborators. David Bowie, The Boss and David Byrne — these are the pantheon of rock's elder statesmen. Their approval, let alone their eagerness to pick up a guitar or mic with the band, is a sure-fire sign of only better things to come for the preternaturally talented Arcade Fire. 

George Stroumboulopoulos says:
"I don't think I could love a band more than I do The Arcade Fire on that song 'Intervention.'  'Who's going to throw the very first stone, who's going to reset the bone?' I think the lyrics are as dark and moody as some of the arrangements are, and I think they are, the perfect artist band."

The following feature is taken from the December 2007 issue of Chart Magazine. To purchase the issue, head on over to the Chart Shop.