Neon Bible
Neon Bible is the second studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire. It was first released on March 5, 2007, in Europe and a day later in North America by Merge Records. Originally announced on December 16, 2006, through the band's website,[4] the majority of the album was recorded at a church the band bought and renovated in Farnham, Quebec.[5] The album is the first to feature drummer Jeremy Gara, and the first to include violinist Sarah Neufeld among the band's core line-up.
For other uses, see Neon Bible (disambiguation).Neon Bible
March 5, 2007
2006
- Primary recording:
- Petite Église (Farnham, QC)
- Win and Régine's house
- St. James Anglican Church
- (Bedford, QC)
- Église St. Jean Baptiste
- (Montreal, QC)
- Hungarian National Radio (Budapest)
- Unknown studio in New York City
46:59
Arcade Fire
Neon Bible became Arcade Fire's highest-charting album at the time, debuting on the Billboard 200 at number two, selling 92,000 copies in its first week and more than 400,000 to date.[6] Being released within a month of similarly successful releases by The Shins (Wincing the Night Away) and Modest Mouse (We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank), Neon Bible was cited as an example of the popularization of indie rock.[7] Critics met the self-produced Neon Bible with acclaim. Publications like NME and IGN praised the album for its grandiose nature,[8][9] while Rolling Stone and Uncut opined that it resulted in a distant and overblown sound.[10][11]
Production[edit]
Following the release of Funeral (2004), which had been recorded in an attic studio known as Hotel2Tango, Arcade Fire decided a permanent recording location was necessary. Following their tour in support of Funeral, the band bought the Petite Église in Farnham, Quebec.[12] Being used as a café at the time of purchase, the Petite Église had once been a church and a Masonic Temple. Once renovation of the church was complete, the band spent the latter half of 2006 recording a majority of the album there. Michael Pärt produced additional recordings in Budapest, recording the Budapest Film Orchestra and a military men's choir.[12] Other sessions included one in New York, where the band recorded along the Hudson River to be near water.[12]
Having produced most of the album themselves, the band decided to bring in someone else for the mixing.[13] Tracks were sent to several well-known mixers/producers to experiment with and after deciding they liked Nick Launay's ideas best, the band invited him to their studio to work on the songs further. For a month Launay worked with the album's engineer and co-producer Marcus Strauss on the mixing of each song, with the band regularly driving up from Montreal to assess their progress. In an interview with HitQuarters, Launay described the mixing process as a "playful thing".[13]
Artwork[edit]
The artwork for the album is a photograph of a six-foot neon sign that the band commissioned for use while on tour. In the photograph used for the cover, the lighted Bible is caught in mid-flicker.[12] Rolling Stone named the artwork one of the five best of the year.[19] AOL Music cited the cover as an example of an artist "keeping artwork alive."[20] The artwork would go on to win Tracy Maurice and François Miron the Juno Award for best CD/DVD Artwork Design of the Year.[21] Frontman Win Butler stated in an interview that the album title is derived from him being particularly attracted to the image, not from the John Kennedy Toole novel The Neon Bible.[5]
Promotion[edit]
Largely due to band member Régine Chassagne's Haitian ancestry, the band has tried to raise support and awareness for the socio-economic problems in Haiti throughout their career. The Haitian people had 15,000 dollars donated to them on November 5, 2005. On December 26, 2006, they supported Haitian charity organization Partners In Health by releasing the song "Intervention" on iTunes and donating the proceeds.[22] However, they accidentally uploaded "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations", the track after "Intervention" on Neon Bible. While the song was quickly removed once the problem was discovered, file sharers quickly circulated it on various P2P networks. On his blog, Win Butler quipped, "I guess it is sort of charming that we can send the wrong song to the whole world with a click of a mouse... Oh well."[23]
On December 28, 2006, the band allowed listeners to listen to their first single, "Black Mirror", by calling the number (866) NEON-BIBLE, extension number 7777.[23] The song was also streamed on the band's website beginning on January 6, 2007.[24] The following day, the band revealed a variety of information about the album through a YouTube video. The video, which played a number of sound clips from the upcoming album and featured "Juno award-winning guitarist Richard Reed Parry", gave the album's track listing, release date, and record label.[25]
On February 2, 2007, all the lyrics to Neon Bible were released on the band's website.[26] Also included was the text and an audio clip of a child reading "The Wolf and the Fox", a French fable allegedly written by 17th century French poet Jean de La Fontaine, an allusion to "The Well and the Lighthouse", which is loosely based around the fable. This was followed on February 5, 2007, with the band releasing a promotional pamphlet as a JPEG image on their website that included album-related imagery and much of the French and English text from "The Wolf and the Fox".[27]
In October 2007, Arcade Fire created a website at beonlineb.com with the date October 6 displayed on it. After speculation over what the website was about, including rumors of new material or a live streaming of a concert, it was eventually revealed to be a video for "Neon Bible", featuring Win Butler's face and hands, which the viewer can interact with during the song. ("Beonlineb" is an anagram of "Neon Bible.") "Neon Bible" was the first song on the album to have a music video.[28]
Neon Bible was released in three versions. They included: