Neon Bible (album)

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This article documents a current album. Information is likely to change as the album remains on the charts.

Neon Bible
Studio album by Arcade Fire
Released	March 3, 2007 (Australia, Austria, Germany, Ireland) March 5, 2007 (Europe) March 6, 2007 (North America)
Recorded	Throughout 2006 in Quebec, New York, Budapest, and London[1]
Genre	Baroque pop Indie
Length	47:03
Label	Merge Rough Trade
Producer(s)	The Arcade Fire
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Blender [Apr 2007, p.109] Drowned in Sound (8.0/10) link Entertainment Weekly (A-) link The Guardian link IGN link Metacritic link NME link No Ripcord (10.0/10) link NOW link The Observer link Pitchfork Media (8.4/10) link Playlouder link PopMatters link Q [April 2007, pg. 107] Robert Christgau (A+) [1] Rolling Stone link Spin [March 2007, pg. 85] Sputnikmusic link Stylus Magazine (A) link The Times link Wireless Bollinger (81/100) [2]
Arcade Fire chronology
Funeral (2004)	Neon Bible (2007)

Neon Bible is the second studio album by Canadian indie band Arcade Fire. It was released on 4 March 2007 in Europe and 5 March 2007 in the United States by Rough Trade and Merge, respectively.

Compared to the band's debut, Funeral, Neon Bible has experienced breakthrough commercial success. During its first week, it debuted at #1 in both Canada and Ireland, and #2 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Portugal. In the United States, Neon Bible was out-charted only by the Notorious B.I.G.'s latest greatest hits compilation, and its #2 placement was a noticeable improvement from Funeral's charting of #137. In the United Kingdom, it was beaten by the Kaiser Chiefs' sophomore album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob.^[2]

Throughout the course of the album, the band employs a pipe organ, a hurdy gurdy, a military choir, and a full Hungarian orchestra, among others. Frontman Win Butler described the album as sounding "like standing by the ocean at night". Butler has stated in an interview that the album is not named after the John Kennedy Toole novel The Neon Bible and that the identical titles are purely coincidental.^[3]

On 19 January 2007, the band announced the singles from the record. "Black Mirror" is the current single for the United States, whereas the current single for the United Kingdom is "Keep the Car Running". Intervention will probably be the second single for the United Kingdom.^[4] Both singles are currently available for download in MP3 form.^[5]

Contents 1 Promotion 2 Leaks 3 Track listing 4 Editions 5 Charts 6 References

[edit] Promotion

Neon Bible has been noted for some of its unique promotional schemes.

On 28 December 2006, the band allowed listeners to listen to their first single ("Intervention") by calling the number (866) NEON-BIBLE, extension number 7777.^[6] The phone line is still active, though it currently plays the US single "Black Mirror" instead of "Intervention". "Black Mirror" can also be heard by visiting the band's website.^[7]

On 7 January 2007, the band revealed a variety of information through a bizarre YouTube video.^[8] The video, which played a variety of sound clips from the upcoming album and featured "Juno-award winning guitarist Richard Reed Perry", gave the album's track listing, the date that the album would be released, and which label the band would be putting the album out on.

On 2 February 2007, the band released all the lyrics to Neon Bible on their website (which one can access by clicking the "lyrics" tab in the upper left corner of the page^[9]). The band also included the text for "The Wolf and the Fox", a fable allegedly written by 17th century French poet Jean La Fontaine. If a user clicks on this poem, then an audio clip of a child reading it in French will be played.^[10] While it is not clear exactly why the band chose to include the poem, the lyrics seem to reflect the sentiment of the song "The Well and the Lighthouse".

On 5 February 2007, the band released a strange JPEG image on their website that included album-related imagery and much of the French and English text from "The Wolf and the Fox", written upside down.^[11]

[edit] Leaks

Largely due to Régine Chassagne's heritage, the band has tried to raise support and awareness for the socio-economic problems in Haiti throughout their career. In the December of 2006, they decided to support Haitian charity organization Partners in Health by releasing the song "Intervention" to iTunes and donating the proceeds.^[12] 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. Thus, on December 26, 2006, "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" became Neon Bible's first leaked track.^[6]

“	The song that people have downloaded from the US side of iTunes is called "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations", and it is the next track on the record after "Intervention". 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.	”
—Win Butler, in his blog.

Neon Bible was leaked to the internet in its entirety roughly a month before its release. Anticipating the forthcoming leaks, the band jokingly claimed in December 2006 to have released over 100 tracks to MySpace under various band aliases and put the 11 most popular tracks on the record.^[6]

“	We decided to try and get a couple of songs out to people before the record leaks... Which is inevitable as the Christmas cold, I can feel coming. But keep in mind that the record is very much meant to be heard as a whole. That is why we leaked over 100 songs on MySpace as fake band names over the last year and then made a compilation of the 11 most popular songs and called it Neon Bible! You will all hear the whole record in due time, and I am sure it will all make sense.	”
—Frontman Win Butler, in an NME interview.

[edit] Track listing

1. "Black Mirror" – 4:13
2. "Keep the Car Running" – 3:29
3. "Neon Bible" – 2:16
4. "Intervention" – 4:19
5. "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" – 3:57
6. "Ocean of Noise" – 4:53
7. "The Well and the Lighthouse" – 3:56
8. "(Antichrist Television Blues)" – 5:10
9. "Windowsill" – 4:16
10. "No Cars Go" – 5:43
11. "My Body Is a Cage" – 4:47

• The song "No Cars Go" is a new recording featuring full orchestral arrangement of an earlier version on the band's self-titled EP from 2003.

[edit] Editions

• Regular CD
• Deluxe CD, in a paperboard clamshell box (which has a holographic front cover) with two 32-page flip books designed by Tracy Maurice^[1].
• Double LP, featuring the album on 3 sides of the vinyl and an etching on the 4th side. The album also comes with a code that allows purchasers to download the entire album in the MP3 format. Due to manufacturing delays, the vinyl's release was pushed back to May 8, 2007.

[edit] Charts

Album

Year	Country	Position
2007	Canada	1
2007	Ireland	1
2007	United States	2
2007	United Kingdom	2
2007	Portugal	2
2007	Norway	3
2007	Australia	7
2007	Germany	11
2007	Spain	14
2007	Austria	25

[edit] References

Arcade Fire
Win Butler | Régine Chassagne | Richard Reed Parry | William Butler | Tim Kingsbury | Sarah Neufeld | Jeremy Gara
Howard Bilerman
Discography
Arcade Fire (EP) | Funeral | Neon Bible
Singles
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) | Neighborhood #2 (Laïka) | Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) | Cold Wind | Rebellion (Lies) | Wake Up
Intervention | Black Mirror | Keep the Car Running
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