Arcade Fire’s debut album didn't just introduce the Canadian indie outfit to the world. It helped a generation grieve.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
The grief that’s so reminiscent of fear that C.S. Lewis talked about—the loss of a loved one, and the grieving process that follows—is what makes death so awful. But it’s also why Arcade Fire’s Funeral—a story of loss and hope for its creators and audience—is as sad as it is beautiful. The album turns 10 on Sunday, September 14 and because of the shared experience of loss and grief it houses, it’s a record that will never die in the hearts of so many.
Funeral’s legacy has been met with so much effusive praise that reading reading too much of in one sitting makes it come off as almost sarcastic. It’s consistently rated well on 2004 year-end, ’00s decade-end and all-time album lists. Few hosannas about Funeral have been left unsaid. But the benefit of ten years’ hindsight can lend valuable perspective. Surrounded by post-punk/dance-punk revival acts in the 2004 music blogosphere Arcade Fire made it okay, even cool and fashionable, for music in the budding world of indie rock to be earnest.
If you ask most critics, Funeral positioned Arcade Fire as more mature than bands like Taking Back Sunday or Brand New (i.e.: emo bands). But even so, at the time Arcade Fire was one band of a stylistically diverse spectrum of acts crying out. There was a push—generally along certain age and generational lines—that fueled the rise of music that was desperate for an emotional connection and cultural coalescence. Arcade Fire’s Funeral was perhaps the biggest flashpoint.
As Pitchfork wrote in its review of Funeral, “It's taken perhaps too long for us to reach this point where an album is at last capable of completely and successfully restoring the tainted phrase ‘emotional’ to its true origin. Dissecting how we got here now seems unimportant. It's simply comforting to know that we finally have arrived.”
It follows, then, that the story behind Funeral is streaked with grieving and loss. Regine Chassagne's grandmother, Win and Will Butler's grandfather and Richard Reed Parry's aunt died during the record’s creation and/or recording, inspiring deep sadness but also a resurgent hope within a group of band members that are, in effect, a family.Rarely have bands in recent memory seemed so closely knit as Arcade Fire. Butler and Chassagne are married with a child, the band features Win’s brother Will and that’s not even mentioning its web of current, former and rotating members, the band’s de facto extended family.
“The guitar tech is a basketball buddy, the assistant manager is my boyfriend’s best friend, the toddler daughter of the tour manager is everyone’s ward,” said Owen Pallett, the band’s string/choral arranger and one of its violinists since the Funeral days. “Jeremy [Gara, Arcade Fire’s drummer] records with me, I record with Sarah [Neufeld, another Arcade Fire violinist], Sarah records with Richy [Reed-Parry], we are all very close.”
“Funeral doesn’t feel ten years old to me,” Pallett wrote in an email interview. “I think that musicians age faster than their records. I’m more shocked to look back at photos of Arcade Fire and myself from 2004 and see how young we all were.”But even as someone who has made the band seem so epic musically, Pallett demurs when it comes to discussing Arcade Fire or Funeral’s larger influence.“Concerns like ‘legacy’ and ‘watershed moment,’ I try to avoid letting myself think about that stuff too closely,” he said. “I can’t speak for the band, but I’d guess that they don’t think about that stuff either. It’s tough to talk about without sounding like an asshole, I guess?”
The album’s success—Funeral went gold in 2011—speaks for itself. And its organic rise mirrored the rise of music blogs and social media’s influence, allowing musicians to connect with audiences like they’d never been able to before. Frontman Win Butler knew it all too well, as it was happening. Playing the 2004 CMJ Festival the month of Funeral’s release, Butler was quoted in the New York Times cracking wise and keenly self-aware, presumably thinking the band’s initial blog-fueled hype would never turn into anything lasting. Man, was he wrong.
He joked, “I'd like to thank the Internet.” At the start of one of the band’s CMJ sets, he said, “All right. We're the flavor of the month. Let's go," with no idea how short-sighted that comment would sound ten years later, when Arcade Fire finds itself with an Album of the Year GRAMMY and finished with a year-long world tour of arenas, the first indie-label blog-buzz band to make it to that level.
On the surface, Funeral—like the actual burial ceremony—is about honoring those we’ve lost. But that’s a half-truth at best. A funeral is mostly for the living. They let us be sad and grieve, but also affirm our lives while we’re here. That’s exactly what Funeral does.
This is my Funeral story.
My father died of cancer in early 2005. Funeral got me through it. His health had gone downhill fast since the beginning of that year. I was living with him while he and my mother were separated. For the month of January, I took care of him, terrified and deeply alone, putting on a brave face for my dad, family, friends, teachers and total strangers. Lift those heavy eyelids, we hear on "Rebellion (Lies)." But I was watching my father slip away each day.
In a cruel twist of role reversal that God eventually plays on us all, I took care of my dad the way he took care of me when I was just a baby. As hard as I tried to be a good, caring son, I’m ashamed to admit the situation paralyzed me with fear, depression and shame, too scared to tell my mother how bad my dad was doing until she had to find out on her own. By February, she found him asleep at our kitchen table off his narcolepsy medication (it conflicted with his painkillers). I finally told her what was going on, choking it out. She checked him into a hospital, then hospice care, where he would live out his final days, my mother and I at his side. My mom and dad weren’t really speaking at the time and would always fight when they did. Sometimes the police would get called. Sometimes I’d call them. As they say on "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)", The neighbors can dance in the police disco lights.
When she found him, I feared she wouldn’t care and leave him to die. I feared she would euthanize him—a final wish my father strongly considered in his final years— with satisfaction. That’s how bad they were fighting.
At first, dad could use the bathroom alone. Then he couldn’t. He could feed himself. And then he couldn’t. At that point, we both knew he didn’t have much time. Sleeping is giving in. When he finally said so, verbally, frustrated with me as I got him dressed one day, I broke down in front of him. This was everything I had ever feared. I felt ashamed that I couldn’t take care of him better. If you still want me, please forgive me.I had just started college and was overwhelmed. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. Because like Win Butler sings on "Crown of Love," the spark is not within me.
In hindsight, I’m glad I got to take care of him. I feel grateful for the experience because it taught me so much about patience, grace, forgiveness and many other life lessons. Because now I can pinpoint the moment when I became an adult. I miss him nearly every day and, like anyone who’s lost a loved one always says, I’d give anything to spend one more day with him.
Looking back, I can say for sure that Funeral helped me cope. In the precious few hours when he could sleep soundly due to his pain, I’d put on Funeral and just fucking weep my guts out, particularly to “Wake Up” or “In the Backseat”. It sounds intense and emotionally confrontational, and it was, but damn it made me feel better. Looking back, I think it was because I could sense Arcade Fire knew what I was going through. It turned out I was right.
Funeral reminded us that in spite of a fragmented media age, perhaps even because of it, an album could still take hold on a mass of people and move them deeply through loss and grief. It’s not just a testament to the band’s talent or how music captivates people, but resilience. Children, wake up. Hold your grief up.
