Music Collection #9: Arcade Fire

With Nanowrimo done, I have returned to music blogging (by less than popular demand)!

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: Funeral
Favorite Song: Wake Up
Origin: Birthday present last year

So Arcade Fire were the hot new indie band at one point (2004), combining all of the essential elements of indie-stardom - being from Canada, having tons of multi-instrumental members, having inpenetrable lyrics (some in French, even!), and having a lead singer with a weird name (Win Butler). The best part of having a singer with a weird name, by the way, is that people can totally drop it into conversation or cd reviews or whatever, and it's awesomely pretentious - "The arpeggiated harmonies on this song have such a Win Butler-esque appeal" or "After listening several times, I still couldn't figure out the double-tracked vocal melange. What is this, a Win Butler track?" Best of all, it doesn't have to make sense. But readers or listeners will just assume that you have some sort of insight into the mind of Win Butler, who must (must!) be some sort of reclusive genius or idiot savant or something.

Anyway, I got a bit off-track there. Point is, Arcade Fire were the hot new indie band at one point. Then I saw them on, like, the Fashion-Music Awards or some such crap show. And they were performing their song Wake Up with David Bowie (sharing lead vocals with the aforementioned Win Butler). The song was super-awesome - much better than the usual mix-an-up-and-coming-band-with-an-established-star mash-ups that they often do at awards shows. So I put their CD on my wishlist and received it for my birthday. And it's good, but not as super-awesome as the hype led me to believe. Wake Up, however, is still an awesome track - my favorite, in fact.