On Arcade Fire, Or The Kids Ain’t Alright

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Last week, the new Arcade Fire CD, “Neon Bible”, was released in the United States and Canada. It might be coming out in the UK too, but it doesn’t really matter one way or the other, because Arcade Fire are a terrible band.

That’s right hipsters, you heard me.

Arcade Fire aren’t just terrible, that’s being too kind. Arcade Fire are a big hemorrhoid on the asshole of America. They’re that kind of toilet paper that your roommate buys because he’s too cheap to spring for the double-leaf rolls with aloe vera.

Or maybe not. Maybe I’m just a soulless, heartless, unsympathetic prickface. It’s possible that I just don’t get it—that their tunes about dead grandparents and banding in brotherhood and just fucking reaching for it have too much emotional outpouring for me to understand because I’ve never really been in love, at least not beyond simple adolescent infatuations or crushes or Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition fantasies.

Gotcha. That’s exactly what Arcade Fire are: a fantasy, a mirage, a vision of indie rock that kids in plaid, snap button-downs and Levi’s are desperate for. From where I’m sitting, Arcade Fire are insincere bastard people. Their incredibly pretentious, ostentatious, and downright importunate attempts at getting college kids and twenty-somethings to shed tears is a deplorable con. Most importantly, it speaks volumes about what’s wrong with the indie rock of today. Because I’m wondering what the hell happened, where this brand of music, one that was so vitally dangerous that it was a zestful cry to everyone to just fucking BREATHE for a second, waved “bye bye” and was replaced by what we have now.

The indie bands of lore, like The Replacements and Guided By Voices and Pavement and let’s lump Fugazi in there…they didn’t give a shit. To them, it didn’t matter if they were successful or selling records or gracing the covers of magazines. Hell, Fugazi refused to appear in Rolling Stone and just about every other major music rag of the day. But now, the term “indie rock” doesn’t apply. It’s an oxymoron, a candle in a shoe factory, a gold plated doubloon with a slit that bleeds tangerine. These bands are so heavily promoted by their labels, downloaded and heard months before the actual release, and blogged about by enough nerds to start a Dungeons & Dragons convention that they’ve lost what made them “independent.”

Which is precisely what’s drastically wrong with Arcade Fire. The Montreal band writes songs that are more than just heartfelt, string-laced rallying calls—they’re blatantly obvious sales pitches. “You Know that I’m a God-fearing man / But I just gotta know if it’s part of your plan / To seat my daughter there by your right hand,” frontman Win Butler sings on “Antichrist Television Blues.” Butler wants us to feel that pain, but he’s rubbing it right in our collective face, and we’re smelling it and breathing it in until we suffocate from the pure sugary syrup that rag’s soaked in. And I just don’t feel it, because in his Heartland-aping attempt to reach people, he’s more of a PR rep than a fire-breathing, singing man. Stephen Malkmus sang “Attention and fame, a career, careear, Koreear, KOREA, KOREA!” and that hit me more than Butler’s bleary nonsense. The difference lies in that Malkmus is writing songs for himself and Butler is writing songs for his audience. A lot of critics have been quick to point out a strong Springsteen influence in Butler’s tunes. These critics have been asleep, ‘cause they don’t realize that The Boss wrote to exorcise his own demons, as proven by his R&B-laced, old style R&R, while his Canadian employee is pushing grocery carts of mush, layering booming drums and orchestral nonsense to achieve an effect that has no gusto. You’re a fraud, lemonhead.

Yet the most troubling thing ain’t Arcade Fire, it’s the half-hearted snobs that are buying into this silliness. Unshaven kids in sailor hats with their smelly girlfriends and American Apparel wardrobes: I BLAME YOU! None of you are reading anything except music zines and blogs and doing what you’re told. Or maybe you’re doing what you want, but then you haven’t felt anything in your whole life, you’re aching for something that isn’t there, and you’re doing it because you need it. But you don’t kids, you’ve got other things out there, and they don’t need to be dramatic for you to feel it. So throw your TVs out a window, find something that matters, and get me a whiskey on the rocks before I throw an iron and it falls on your face and then I fly into the great tomorrow with the wings of a pterodactyl.

—TR

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