Proverbial

If someone still had any doubts about the Arcade Fire’s renown as a rock band, I guess this five-page NY Times piece on them might help settle the matter:

Four years ago, when the Arcade Fire first started performing its songs from “Funeral,” it took the band six months to create the kind of show that eventually brought it such renown. Now, with a highly anticipated album about to come out, a year of tour dates lined up and one night to go before they were to begin their five-show run in London, the musicians were still groping their way forward — trying to find portable (and performable) ways of recreating the symphonic richness of “Neon Bible” by reworking vocal approaches and instrumental arrangements and improvising new bits of theater.

Pitchfork, which helped making them popular with a 9.7 review for their debut album, wasn’t all that impressed with Neon Bible, which only got an 8.4. I tend to agree with most of what they’ve said in it, but the Arcade Fire still sounds so fresh, so different and so good to me, that I can’t really say it’s any worse than Funeral. Now I just hope the damn thing gets released in Brazil soon, and that they come to play at Porto Alegre again.