The Arcade Fire: “Burning Up Charts Worldwide”

It’s a safe bet that unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve heard of the band The Arcade Fire. From music critics around the globe to musicians such as Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie and the members of Coldplay, The Arcade Fire has been hailed as the most interesting and innovative rock group to come along in years. The band’s sound is so eclectic and original that it is almost impossible to compare them to any other band in the new rock scene today, blending violins, accordions and xylophones with rock guitars and drums. And perhaps what is most amazing about the Arcade Fire is that the band originates from none other than Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Despite the group’s sudden monster success and critical acclaim, the Arcade Fire has only been a band since about mid-2003. The nucleus of the group consists of the husband and wife team of lead singer Win Butler and keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist Regine Chassagne. Butler, who holds quite the vocal resemblance to Frank Black of the Pixies, moved to Montreal around early 2001 looking for musicians to work with. He quickly came upon Chassagne, a classically trained musician originally from Haiti who can sing, play the guitar, mandolin, piano, drums, accordion, flute and harmonica. Musically and creatively, Butler and Chassagne almost immediately clicked, writing song after song in a short span of time. Although the two of them showed great musical chemistry together, the entity known as the Arcade Fire didn’t really start to develop until the two started to collaborate with current guitarist Richard Parry. Parry soon brought bass player Tim Kingsbury into the fold and the band was born.

The band started to play gigs around early 2003 and added Butler’s younger brother Will to the mix who had been attending college in Chicago. The band continued to play shows into the summer and Butler and Chassagne got married in August, 2003. They finally decided to record a debut album soon after; an extremely involved endeavour that saw the band work with over a dozen other musicians. The result of this massive collaboration was the band’s debut album titled Funeral, released in September, 2004. Funeral was an appropriate title for the disc, as many of the band members experienced numerous deaths in their respective families around the time of the recording of the record.

Funeral was released on indie label Merge Records and no one really expected the band’s far out sound to catch on in the mainstream. The early success of the disc was mostly attributable to word of mouth and the internet. The band played an enormous amount of gigs and internet music sites began to praise the group as the greatest thing in new rock music. Interest continued to rise and soon the group was selling out its late 2004 tour. The buzz around the band began in Canada, but soon spread around the world to the United States, Europe and Japan.

Today, The Arcade Fire is without a doubt one of the biggest and most popular new rock acts on the planet. They possess a sound like no other band; it is fresh, exciting and eclectic. Funeral has been included on almost every important top ten album lists of 2004/2005 and interest in the band continues to skyrocket. Currently, the band is continuing an endless tour behind Funeral that won’t subside until early 2006. If you’re bored of a lot of the mainstream rock talent that is currently out there be sure to check out the Arcade Fire, you will not be disappointed.  [ END ]