15 years ago, Arcade Fire released their iconic album Funeral, and the indie/alternative music scene (along with my life) was never the same. There’s a reason this record is a mainstay in my life and many others. There’s a reason you can hear the lingering of its tracks in the background of music festivals, movie scenes, and on almost any road trip or bonfire playlist. In 2004, Pitchfork wrote in its album review of Funeral:
Ours is a generation overwhelmed by frustration, unrest, dread, and tragedy. Fear is wholly pervasive in American society, but we manage nonetheless to build our defenses in subtle ways– we scoff at arbitrary, color-coded “threat” levels; we receive our information from comedians and laugh at politicians. Upon the turn of the 21st century, we have come to know our isolation well. Our self-imposed solitude renders us politically and spiritually inert, but rather than take steps to heal our emotional and existential wounds, we have chosen to revel in them.
This review was written 15 years ago, but it still resonates strongly with the society of today – much like the album itself. Funeral evokes sickness and death, but also understanding and renewal; childlike mystification, but also the impending coldness of maturity. The recurring motif of a non-specific “neighborhood” suggests the supportive bonds of family and community, but most of its lyrical imagery is overpoweringly desolate. Funeral is a record that provided a soundtrack to a generation who wanted to feel something but didn’t know what, and barely remembered how. It came when we needed something of sustenance, and it delivered in spades. Its legacy is giving meaning where there once was little. Emotion when the well had run dry. It is the greatest album of the moral, ethical, spiritual conundrum that was the 2000s and has carried over into the 2010s.
Funeral, an expansive, shimmering opus, arrived at a time when the much simpler garage and post-punk revivals were dominating alternative music. But it also coincided with the first season of The O.C. and Garden State’s soundtrack — a time when alternative fans were ready for well-meaning indie bands to change their lives. And change their lives it sure did.
If you’re not an Arcade Fire fan yet, click the links below to check out some of my favorite songs from Funeral.
