Rocktrospectiva: The Empowering "Funeral" Turns 20

 

Released on 14 September 2004, "Funeral" was the debut studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, recording during the course of a week, and completed later that 2003 in an analogue recording format. The album spawned five singles "Neighborhood # 1 (Tunnels)", "Neighborhood # 2 (Laika)", "Neighborhood # 3 (Power Out)", "Rebellion (Lies)", & "Wake Up". The most succssful was "Rebellion (Lies)" peaking at No. 19 on the UK singles Chart, and also nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005 for Best Alternative Music Album. 

The album was given its title because several band members had recently lost members of their families; Régine Chassagne's grandmother died in June 2003, Win and William Butler's grandfather in February 2004, and Richard Reed Parry's aunts in April 2004. 

 

When the album was released, nothing else sounded quite like it. With ramshackle, frenetic arrangements, thrift-store instrumentation and madcap performances, so this band delivered a portrait of grief and existential dread as euphoria. It was a surprisingly affecting approach that came at a time when guitars dominated the indie rock landscape. The album considered a game-changing debut, "Funeral" was desginated as one of the most triumphant rock records of all time, one of the most influential indie rock albums of its time, full of deliriously euphoric songs of the 2000s, a genre shift created from an economic cincumstance to an aspirational model, a cathartic rock album hard to replicate, in order to inspire the future of indie rock music.

The album entered the Billboard 200, providing their label Merge the first succesful album to debut on that list, also the fatest-seller recording too in the history of that label, the album received a massive acclamed hailed as a modern classic, a brave, empowering, and dusted with something that many of the indie-rock genre's more contrived acts desperately lack which is an element of real danger, a glorious debut album, in which Arcade Fire spins elaborate art-rock full of passion and atmosphere, and finally topped many year-end and decade-end lists. 

 

Funeral Track List:  

 

1. Neighborhood # 1 (Tunnels)

2. Neighbornood # 2 (Laika)

3. Une Année Sans Lumière

4. Neighborhood # 3 (Power Out)

5. Neighborhood # 4 (7 Kettles)

6. Crown Of Love

7. Wake Up

8. Haiti

9. Rebellion (Lies)

10. In The Backseat