Podunkian Music Club

The Arcade Fire- Rebellion (lies)

Montreal’s lively indie scene provided Canada with one of the most unusual of sounds in the early part of this decade and one of the most promising of bands that could define a sound for the rest of it.

It was back in the eighties that Montreal spawned a similar surprise sound that took the music world by storm, Men Without Hats provided something completely different at the time and the Safety Dance would eventually conquer both the dance clubs and the video channels of the day, a techno pop beat that eventually would come to represent the only image left of the band.

The Arcade Fire may be able to avoid that fate with their subsequent releases, but Rebellion (Lies) will most likely be known as their definitive sound. The eight member (sometimes more depending on the day or the show) band, uses a variety of instruments and manic energy to craft together one of those compositions that you rarely can purge from you memory. You hear the opening riffs and let the sound crash around you, the lyrics punching out at the air while the momentum of those unusual sounds builds along the way,

The band came out of virtually nowhere, the product of a number of musicians that found some common ground in Montreal by way of the USA or Haiti. The Petri dish of Montreal’s club scene of the early part of this decade had the city pegged as the next big thing, the heir to the sounds of Seattle, New York and Motown.

2005 found them on the cover of the Canadian edition of Time magazine, a rather lofty spot for a club band that was only then starting to find international recognition at major music festivals in the US, Europe and Asia. While there may have been some trepidation over tempting a cover curse, they avoided the fate of the superstitious by continuing on with their march to success. The key recording thus far has been the Funeral album that has served as a fairly impressive introduction for the band into those ears outside of the Montreal area. A critical success, it's release was greeted with a number of glowing reviews that set the band above the pack of the emerging sounds of the new millenium.

The follow up is due anytime now, with a cadre of fans waiting to see where the band goes to next, an interesting path of musicology that doesn’t fit into any predictable mould.

As things have evolved the Montreal scene didn’t quite lead to an invasion of young earnest rockers to change the play lists of the world’s iPods, but the sounds that have come out of there have shown a healthy music environment, A trail that has been blazed by the Arcade Fire which has found their new home to be quite inspiring and quite rewarding as well.

Artist-The Arcade Fire
Recording- Funeral