NPR Music - Arcade Fire's 'Funeral' at 20

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

We look back at Arcade Fire's monumental debut album, why it was so special, the ways it changed the musical landscape, and how it sounds two decades later. Questions, comments or any feedback at all always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Stephen was actually, he just had this running gag through all of his texts to me yesterday. If I could just find out who this arcade fireband is, I will be ready to go for this taping. And I was kind of like rolling my eyes through all of them. Like he wasn't getting me. And then last night he says, arcade firemen. I just don't know that if I could just figure out. And when he said, fireman, that was when I finally broke. I'm like, when I typed Arcade Fireman into Wikipedia,

Yeah. And that's when I finally just like, finally just... It's amazing how they could... They're celebrating the 20th anniversary of this debut album and we're still making these jokes. So Stephen Thompson here, also with us is Raina Dura's host of World Cafe from WXPN. And Raina, you're from Canada. Where in Canada are you from?

Are you from Montreal? No, I'm from Toronto. But Canada is a small town in a way that looks like a huge country on a map. So it all feels connected. So where were you in your life when a funeral came out 20 years ago? Were you a sentient being at that point? I was. I was just wrapping up high school at that point, which made me like basically the perfect age for an album like this.

Plus, it was when I was going through a on and off heartbreak of my first, like, big, it was a perfect storm for me and this record. And I was, like, working an insurance job and taking a train from the summer I lived to. to downtown Toronto every day that I had to get up for at 5.30 a.m. And 5.30 a.m. in the middle of winter in Canada is... Not ideal. I grew up in central Wisconsin. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know. It's extremely dark. It's extremely cold. It's extremely bleak feeling. Well, it's interesting. I wonder how my relationship with this record would have been different had it come out when I was graduating from high school. feeling stuck for a few last months in my hometown.

I wouldn't have had that winter feeling that Raina's describing. But this record didn't quite speak to the exact headspace that I was in at the time. The records that spoke to me the most in 2004 were by bands like The Frames that had a lot of that same swelling, but it felt a little more personal. It felt a little more... I would latch on to lyrics. Ted Leo and the pharmacists. Kind of, kind of, that same thing.

Big exploding emotions, but I was latching onto them lyrically more. Big exploding emotions? I mean, that's all this album is. I think, like, when you were talking about the lyrical content of this album, it's very hard to pin down what it actually is saying. Like, the lyrics are kind of, they're cryptic, and it's more about the feelings and about the actual, like, literal lyrics of the record. Like, Crown of Love, I'll give that as an example.

I listened to that on my way into work. I listened to that on my way into work yesterday. and I, like, hit me. I still don't know. Like, that song feels like the meanings switch back and forth. It still made me cry on the way in. And I think that's part of why it hit me was because the lyrics could kind of fit into any big emotion that you're feeling.

My big feelings in, say, 1990, when I was, you know, coming out of high school and going into college, was this kind of like, how do I fit into the world, man? What's the world? Like, what's the state of the world? and how am I going to change it? In 2004, the music that spoke to me the most was like, I'm a mess. What is the matter with me? And I don't think this record is necessarily digging around in that terrain so much.

The feelings that they're conjuring up is like wanting to be bigger, right? This is a record that's very good for making yourself feel bigger than you are. We're going to touch on, I think, a lot of where this record fits. into the grand scheme of music and the aughts, which it's so pivotal, it's so important. It's such a major transitional record. Yeah, I think for me, I came at it from a pure sonic standpoint. It was one of those records that felt like everything was about to change in music, in indie rock in particular.

And there have been a handful of times like that over the years where a record came out that made me stop and think, well, now wait a minute, what's this? You know, this is going to sound like a really, really silly example, but it's the first one I thought of. It's like when Guns and Roses dropped a massive old-school guitar rock album in the late 80s. After years of synth pop and hair metal and all this, it's just suddenly like, wait a minute, what is this nasty thing? You know, this old school, like, is everything about to change in what's being played on the radio?

And sure enough, Grunge followed pretty soon after. And we did get a lot more guitar rock. Funeral kind of had that same impact on me, where I thought it feels like everything's about to change. I would liken it to like the scene in Wizard of Oz, you know, where all of a sudden everything's kind of in technicolor. This helped usher in a foray into this more technicolor indie rock sound. You know, records between the early aughts and the late aughts, you got this sonic blooming. Before funeral, they might have been ornate, you know, but there was like a scrappiness to it that then all of a sudden... Scrappiness to funeral.

Yeah, there's a scrappiness to the sound of funeral. As much as there is going on in that record, it still feels like a bridge between early Otts indie rock and late Otts big production value technicolor indie rock. Yeah, it doesn't sound polished. Like it sounds like 10 people in a little room in Montreal. Yeah. Yeah, I actually reached out to Regine Chasson in the band to ask her to share some memories of making the album. You know, maybe some stuff that people didn't know already. And, you know, it really was just her and Winn Butler for a long time working these songs out in their loft apartment.

Yeah. But, you know, they wanted a big sound. So she says that they got some friends finally to record with them. And I guess they were living over this bar And that the owners of the bar Thought of them as those noisy kids Those noisy neighbors upstairs disturbing their customers because the sound did get so big

Regine also said You know we played a bit of the song Crown of Love She said that that song Almost didn't make it on the album I guess when didn't like it But she found a demo of it And had to convince him that You know that it was good enough to include on the record

But let's talk a little bit more about what made funeral, you know, sort of stand out so much at the time and why it connected so much? I think it's interesting to, like, think about it with the backdrop that it was happening on, because we're talking about how it felt like something was going to change musically. But it was released in a time where things were changing in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. And not just me on a personal level saying, like, I'm going from being a teenager, being adult, leaving high school, whatever. But, like, on a global scale, it was, you know, not long after 9th,

11 happened. The Iraq war is going on. In Canada, we were worried about that. Even though we're in a different country, it felt very real. The Afghanistan war was happening. And I think there was this feeling of confusion and like tension and that sound of the album where there's so much tension and then catharsis, tension and then release. And it's like, you don't know exactly, it's not an explicitly political album. It's not talking about these things that are happening in the world. But sonically, it captures this feeling of we don't know what we're doing or like we're scared or there's like this tension here and then this feeling of freedom and release and catharsis that doesn't it's kind of nameless in the record but it felt so appropriate I think Stephen maybe one of the things that made it hard for you to connect with is that

when I listen to it there's just so much existential dread and enwee and grief and like I can't imagine those being the things you really wanted to connect with if you were struggling in 2000 but the thing that was so distinctive in the case of this record is that it was all of those things expressed as euphoria. You know, it just erupts everywhere. It feels like joy even though there's so much sorrow in it. Yeah, and I think I've been able over the years to kind of reconnect with this record and appreciate it more and that hope and joy and euphoria of this record more.

interestingly though as i've been able to kind of catch up to this record in the years since i have then had to kind of reconcile it with other arcade fire records that then also weren't speaking to me interesting yeah i in some ways they are kind of a a band that is hard to completely know or understand especially as our views of the band have changed in recent years and we're going to talk more about that later. But I don't know, when you listen to the sound, though, there are so many things that I think we're all aware of that are so distinctive that popped so much when you listen to these songs. They really brought home the whole idea of the ho-haye, right? I mean, all the little hoos and the wuss and the haze. And sometimes those wuts come in at, you know, just the quietest

little moments. They're gentle little wos in the background, right? I don't think that they fell into this category, but they kind of set the stage for like the commercial grade ho-haying of like future bands that would come after them. Right. And a close cousin of the stomp clap, right? Totally. The stomp clap. Totally that.

But just, and also the big, sprawling, just the madcap bands and instrumentation. And they brought that to their live performances. Have either of you seen them live? I would imagine, at least Rainer you have. I have, I dressed up in costume as required to go and see them live. Actually, I will tell you my biggest, and I'm going to take you back to before our funeral came out, my biggest concert regret. The first time I heard about Arcade Fire was in 2003. I was in high school.

That same boyfriend that I went through the breakup with. It's interesting. We have him on the line right now. Oh, great. That's Nick. How are you? You know, he invited me to go to this show in downtown Toronto. And I don't know why I couldn't go.

He probably wasn't allowed to go for some reason. And it was this band Constantine's amazing band. Oh, yeah. Wellf, Ontario got a show at them out. They were playing a show at the Horseshoe Tavern, like a 400-person menu. And I can't go. Boyfriend goes, the next day, he's like raving about this show. He has a show poster, and he's like, yeah, Constantine's were really, really great.

But you've got to hear this band, Arcade Fire. And he shows it to me. And they were the opening band in a 400-person club in Toronto. Raina. And I didn't see it. And it was like, it still bothers me that I, for some reason, just couldn't go to the show. Anyway, I did eventually go and see them. I think I've seen them, I think twice.

I know for a fact, I dressed up for one of them. When you say dress up, do you mean like an old timey clothes or something? Oh, no, no. They said on the, I think it was like the tour was like, we ask you come in fancy dress, like in costume. I don't know what it was supposed to be, but it was some like really costume. It kind of looked like a Renaissance fair outfit to be. I'm just going to say, I get, like, I'm getting Renfair vibe. I was kind of Renfair, but you didn't have to be Renfair.

You could go as anything. That's what I decided was speaking to me. I have never seen Arcade Fire live, and I think that sort of speaks to this weird, liminal space this band has lived in for me for 20 years, where they've just never been quite my band. Yeah, I don't know why I've never seen them live. I certainly would have at the time, and I would have to really dig through the cobwebs of my brain to try to think of a reason why I would have missed them. at that time, but I tell you, I definitely remember seeing them do the song Neighborhood 2 on Conan O'Brien in 2005.

Please welcome from Montreal, Canada, the arcade fire. You know, in live music on television history, there have been these watershed moments like Pearl Jam on Saturday Night Live, you know, after 9-11, future islands playing David Letterman. You know, these moments that just blow people away. And that's what their performance on Conan O'Brien was like. It was so wild, so frenetic. They looked sharp. Everyone's in their suits.

But they're wearing motorcycle helmets. And they're just, they're clambering over each other, hit, you know, just flailing wildly and hitting all the percussion. And it was just, again, it was just one of those moments where you stop everything and think, this is, what is this? This is something different. Things are changing. I have never seen anything quite like this.

Well, I'm surprised that we've talked about our. Arcade Fire this long and not mentioned the band U2, which I feel like has had a lot of kind of similar ambitions, sonic ambitions, you know, famous for being an extremely kind of bombastic and charismatic live presence, but also a band that is not unadjacent to cringe. I don't know cringe. What kind of band is that? There's like an excessive kind of earnestness. To like, okay, so I also would put Coldplay in this category sometimes too. Like that, like, I get things now. I see the, like, the truth about the world and I'm here to tell you that, like, we're all the same.

A certain kind of rich hippie. Yes, and that's like, I think that you two, Arcade Fire and Coldplay can kind of fall into that sort of loose category. But do you think that applied to? to Arcade Fire, though, when funeral came out? Like, I think of that later, for sure, that sort of relationship. Maybe they always had that in them, but I don't think that it was felt that way. Although you can kind of, I feel like maybe the seeds of it could be in funeral a little, but it hadn't come to, like, define them.

Yeah. Well, I think it speaks to something that's worth talking about here, which is that Arcade Fire didn't build to funeral. Right. I think when we talk about the arc of a lot of these bands, including Coldplay, They didn't necessarily, like, emerge as an arena band. They didn't emerge as, you know, all upcap to the biggest band in the world. They didn't emerge as, like, a band that's out there telling you what the world is like, man,

the way some of the kind of later arcade fire songs were trying to do. But, like, Funeral came out of the gate, all these voices singing at once, all these sounds happening at once. There's orchestras and they're wearing helmets. And, like, they kind of emerge. with this gigantic artistic ambition instead of building to it over time. And in some ways, I think that probably made it feel a little more authentic than sometimes it does with a band that's kind of graduating to arenas and their sound gets bigger and bigger and their messages get grander and more kind of capital I important. I think maybe the way Arcade Fire had this

arc of coming out with its first record that had all that sonic ambition, right out of the gate is maybe different from some of the stuff we're talking about. Like there's kind of an intellectualism almost to like the arcade fire. Like they feel like a bunch of kids who are earnestly trying to do something that like happened to explode, even though that may not actually be the narrative, but that's what it felt like at the beginning. Whereas like when you look at something like whole player, you two, at least for me and my generation I didn't grow up seeing you two get big, right?

They were big when I was experiencing arcade. When I was in high school, when I was learning about music, when I was getting into music, to me, it always seemed like, well, this is a band that's like a big arena band. This is a band whose aim was to be this big arena band. And I guess when funeral came out, it didn't necessarily feel like their aim was to be a big arena band. It just felt like they had this huge, enormous sam. I mean, the album I think of is Neutral Milk Hotels in the Airplane Over the Sea. That's the one that feels like, at least at this point, in Arcade Fire's arc, the one that would have been the most appropriate sort of, Touchstone. Both are really steeped in history. A sense of the past. There's a lot of grief in both of them.

Both were on merge records. Both of them have that sort of ramshackle, chaotic, sprawling sense of production. Thrift store instrumentation, you know, a sense of whimsy. Even the album cover art for both of them had this sort of old-timey feel, you know. You also have like the big collective feeling of like, Broken Social scene, which was already a band at the time that Funeral came out. Polyphotic Spree, like all these things that were kind of bubbling there too at the same time. And I was talking to somebody about this yesterday, bands that came after Arcade Fire's Funeral that like kind of caught onto some of the stuff they were doing.

And I had never considered this one, but fun. When you like, make about like the We Are Young, huge sing-along course, it's like that feels like the big festival catharsis moment, you know? Big grand catharsis rock made by. theater kids? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or like the sort of like the Coachellification of like we're like, oh, we dress up and we go out and we celebrate that like we're young and we could like this feeling of like we could

be young forever. Like let's throw off the shackles of like society and go live, you know, in a tunnel. When I was thinking back over this whole time and this band and everything, Raina actually one thing that I started becoming very aware of again was how insane the music scene out of Canada was at that time. Yeah. There were two places on the planet that felt like everything was happening. One of them

was Sweden. The other one was Canada. You had broken social scene. Metric. New pornographers. Yeah. Weaker than's. Wolf Parade. It was insane what was coming out of there at that time. And interestingly, Dan Beckner of Wolf Parade. He is now in the Arcade Fire

touring band, but he was in the band before funeral briefly, before they Oh, wow. Yeah. So, like that scene is so, like, again, like I said at the beginning, I think, Canada is like a small town and the Canadian music scene is like an even smaller town. I think, like, the impact of funeral for Montreal, at least from an outside perspective, was, I mean, huge.

It made it like an epicenter for indie rock. And then that shockwave kind of rippled out to Toronto as well. Toronto also had a really strong scene in that period. And it was really exciting. I mean, speaking as someone who was in a little bit after that entered, the sort of Toronto music scene. And it was a very exciting place to be. And I think that a big part of that was because of Arcade Fire.

I mean, it felt like anything was possible. It felt like, this is it. Like, we're Seattle now. We are like, we're like, we're like a New York even. We're like, we're huge. And then, you know, it got too expensive to live there. And now it's really hard to be in a band. But it's the same story everywhere, I guess.

But yeah, it was a really wild time. It was sort of the golden age of indie rock and a lot of, So out of Sweden you had the concretes and Peter Bjorn and John and the shout out louds and Feveray and Yens Lechman, Jose Gonzalez. It was just what an incredible time. Do you feel like a funeral was sort of a crowning moment for that period? Because a lot has been made of the idea that its success changed the whole industry and changed what bands were able to do on their own. And I'm putting that in air quotes, you know. It's hard to say.

I mean, you know, the music world was in such a weird moment. Like, it was kind of the blogosphere hadn't totally, like, taken over everything yet. I don't think in 2004. I mean, I downloaded it. Kind of concurrent. Yeah. I downloaded that there was no streaming, obviously. I downloaded this on Mb3.

I can see the song titles in the font of my creative Zen media player that I carried around. I didn't have an iPod. I had a creative Zen. And like that, it really arrived at this sort of weird spot where people were still buying CDs, but like at a much lower rate. And the idea of like being an independent band even was kind of changing. Because, you know, what does that even mean? The sound of indie rock or the indie music stopped being so much about like you are actually independent. Do you are, you make this sound that we identify as like kind of arcade fire adjacent? I don't know if I'm answering your question. I'm kind of just going to. going off here. But like, yeah, it's hard to say if it was a crowning moment or if it just was part of a bigger shift that we could see a little bit more clearly than the rest of it. It definitely speaks to the kind of increasing collective ambition of a lot of indie rock music.

And I think it spoke to some messy inequalities in indie rock where basically in order to, for a while, in order to succeed as an indie rock band, you had to make the economics work of going on tour splitting very small checks 10 ways. And if you were able to do that, that created a lot of economic barriers to entry that were not terribly sustainable. I think also, though, it signals the beginning of this really the fragmenting in a lot of ways of like the big mainstream music scene. Because, you know, when you look at the suburbs later on, and I guess that was 2010,

It was 2010. It was 2010. It was one album of the year. Yeah. They won the Grammy in 2011. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, this huge record that felt like it was so important.

And then you have all these people when they win being like, who is Arcade Fire. And now I, you know, and now it's a very normal occurrence for me to hear about an artist go on Instagram and they have like three million followers. And I'm like, who is this? They're like, who? What? And that was like the first big example in my memory of like that happening on a big. stage on a big scale like that. I think the other example would be

Who is Bonnie Bear? Do you remember one Bonnie Bear? One best new artist. I know trending topic on Twitter was Who is Bonnie Bear? Both of those cases were, I think, classic examples of the Grammys giving an overdue award

for one that they should have given a couple albums before, right? Yeah, that's a big Grammy move. I mean, the suburbs, can we just talk about the suburbs for one second? There are some jams on there. There are. And I checked my iTunes play count of when was the last time I listened to funeral?

Like when we started having the conversation about how we were going to talk about this record, and I went back. And I last played it in my iTunes in November 2009. Whoa. And it was like, okay, that's when I was like starting to lock in with Arcade Fire. And then they put out this record and it was called The Suburbs. And man, as somebody who lived through American Breaks, beauty and like a million different the movie not the album like suburbia was just such a cliched

picked over topic and all of a sudden like arcade fire was going to like pull back the veil and show us like oh life in the suburbs isn't what you think it's going to be i just i think at least for a while just fully gave up on arcade fire and so of course it won album of the year i think go ahead Oh, sorry. Suburban on Wii was something that, like, Arcade Fire was dealing with on funeral. I think, like, neighborhoods number one right away, it's, like, referencing, it turns the suburbs into this kind of magical place, this boring world that they're in. It's like, I'll dig a towel from my window to yours, talking about, like, your parents' bedrooms are the bedrooms of your friends. Like, all of these things as a kid in the suburbs, it feels like it turns it into this sort of alternate parallel world that, like,

lives on top of it. And I think they were already kind of exploring that idea a little bit. So they came by it semi-honestly at least. They weren't underlining it 25 times. Well, and that I think it's sort of when we talk about the trajectory of Arcade Fire, funerals started out where they weren't underlining it a hundred times. And with each subsequent record, it felt like they were underlining their messages more and more and more. And that kind of hurt them, I think, a little bit. Nobody was asking the question, what is this song about? about arcade fire once you get past neon Bible. I totally agree with you, Stephen, on all of those points.

At the same time, what I feel like I'm hearing is quite a lot of cynicism. It's one reason why I feel like that album was so special at the time, or funeral, because it was so earnest and serious. And so many people seem to embrace that in ways that I, have a hard time imagining what happened today, but maybe. Yeah. It's earnest and serious while also being kind of underground and hasn't been like fully co-opted when it came out in 2004.

But it's worth when you look at the trajectory just of the album Funeral, about five years after funeral came out, it went through a wave of being picked up as like the theme songs from sports talk shows, where, like, you take, like, the chorus of wake up with those, like, that was in every commercial. Like, I think there were, I think, I think it was used in ads for, like, the NFL, like, five years later. Talk about trailing indicators. You know, where this record, this record kind of had a very long tale. It had a long cultural lifespan where, yeah, you know, you.

could tap into these very indie elements of this record, but at the same time, it's a record that is reaching for the stars. It is a record that has these kind of storm surges of sound that were extremely accessible and that you could graft over and add for a football game. Yeah. Whenever you take a nostalgia trip like this and you regard the monument that this album has become. You know, there's a part of you that's looking to sort of reconnect with the way that you felt and the way the world felt when it first came out. You know, like, what did it feel like when this album came out? And can we get that feeling back? And I feel like it's an interesting question to consider in particular. The answer, no, is after the break. It's an interesting

question to consider, I think, with the arcade fire record with funeral, because, yeah, I think the short answer is no for a lot of reasons, but what do you all think? Raina. Even the record itself feels like it's preoccupied with that. It feels like it's preoccupied with yearning. It's like a yearning for like a simpler time. Before things got so complicated, before I had to grow up. When the world felt magical, like I want to go back like that. There's part of that album. There's an element of that, which is interesting because if I'm listening to it 20 years later, thinking about myself listening to it as like a 17, 18 year old, I'm thinking about wanting to go back to the me who was listening to it being like, I want to go back to

like being a child. I don't think you can ever go back to this magical place. It doesn't really exist. But that's why it feels so beautiful to yorn for it, maybe. Isn't that so much of what music does? It gives you an opportunity to kind of visit your past selves and pay a little visit to how you felt back then. And it's why, you know, every piece of music is owned and heard. in a million different ways. Because if you heard this record when you were about to experience the world, it's always going to conjure up that sense of what the world was like before your world changed forever. If you heard this record for the first time when you were in crisis, you know, when you listened to it, in a way, it kind of plunges a tiny part of you back into that crisis.

And I have had that experience with music my whole life. You know, if I go back and listen to the first Tracy Chapman record, you know, I have that feel. of being 16 in my bedroom and realizing the world is bigger than I thought it was. I'm jealous of Raina experiencing this record the way it was meant to be experienced, which is like on the cusp of something bigger. This is an on the cusp of something bigger record in a thousand different ways. And it's that way for listeners as well as for, I'm sure, the band itself. I mean, you can't go back for all of those reasons that you mentioned, but I am with a lot of things from my past. I am able to reconnect with whatever feelings I had at the time. And I think in the case of this record,

one of the biggest things that makes it really hard are all the accusations against Wyden Butler that we haven't mentioned. They've been so damaging, I think, for this record. He was accused by multiple people of sexual misconduct that, you know, it ranged from exploitation of, you know, of inappropriate power dynamics or age gaps, you know, to sexual assault. And he has admitted to having sexual encounters or relationships with at least some of the accusers, but he says that it was consensual. All of the initial accusers were much younger than Win Butler, and most of the interactions, you know, happened or began with him when they started off like they were fans of the band, you know, which again speaks to that power imbalance. In general, I am able to

hold lots of different ideas and, you know, competing ideas in my head at the same time. I guess this album was made and existed long before the things. Butler is accused of, which were reportedly between 2015 and 2020. But it still just makes you question the sincerity and the reality of everything you thought you believed in. And if nothing else, it's just I cannot lose myself in this album the way that I used to or enjoy it quite. You know, it just has this cloud hanging over it. I can listen to it as I did leading up to this taping. I can listen to it now and objectively say, this is an amazing record. This is great music. But I can't have that emotional or deeper connection that I once felt with it. You know, it's, it's taken a hit.

Yeah, I agree that it definitely has taken a hit. I found that I was able to still find that place and, like, lose myself in it. You know, I thought a lot about this stuff as we were preparing for this. And the conclusion I came to is that, like, especially this album, it evokes such strong feelings and memories for me from such a, like, it feels very profound when I listen to it. It really does take me back to like a moment in my life that I don't want to just like dismiss and lose. Those memories are mine and those feelings are mine. And an artist's bad behavior, I don't think that that has the right to take those moments and those memories away from me.

And there are a billion other people in this band who also don't have, don't deserve to have their legacy stripped due to someone's alleged actions, you know, that they didn't have anything to do with. I think that definitely it's hard to take that stuff completely out of the picture. And because my experience with this album was so long before those things came out, so, so long before that stuff came out that, like, it sort of exists in a different universe. Yeah, I think both of you, I think that was really well said. I think you've captured kind of most of what I would have to say about that.

I mean, it's one of the questions I get asked most about music and pop culture and everything is like, how do you separate the art from the artist? And the fact the matter is you almost can't. And every single case is different. Every single case where somebody has turned out to have feet of clay or, you know, has their reputation becomes, you know, much, much more complicated and polarizing. It's hard to have a one-size-fits-all approach to how to how you can can process everything Raina described where like it's not just a band or a record. It's your relationship with that with that music and how it touched and affected your life. And it's very, very hard to unpack all that stuff entirely. What I guess the only thing I would have to add is that it does speak to a large.

larger trajectory with Arcade Fire. With some of the, and I don't want to, I don't want to compare these allegations to the quality of subsequent records. But there is, there has been a little bit of this emerging doubt around Arcade Fire of, like, maybe this band was kind of full of crap all along. And, and I don't think that's, you know, that's certainly as, I really want to go back to what Raina said about, like, there are other people in this band who do not have these allegations swirling around them, who do not deserve to be painted with this brush. But with

Arcade Fire, over the course of the last 20 years, there have been a lot of little puncturings of the mythology. A lot of little, like, this record is great, but what they were aspiring to maybe doesn't speak to me as much. What they turned into doesn't speak to me as much. These subsequent records don't speak to me as much. Like little hints of things that gave me doubt, listening to this record in 2004, have really kind of been born out. you know, over the course of the years since. And I think I think that speaks to a little bit of the curdling of Arcade Fire's reputation in the 20 years since. And I think, you know, going kind of back to what we were talking about with the very earnest arena ban is the way that Arcade Fire or win or whatever, they like positioned themselves.

They felt like they are, I don't know how to put this, like kind of a do-gooder band in a way. You know, that like when you have allegations like that, they become more damaging than if you're like, a sexy rock star and this is what I do. If you're in a rena rock band in 1974, nobody expects you to be any other way. And these allegations come out. But Arcade Fire, it's a very different story. It shatters this image that you're sort of cultivating and have cultivated over the years that you've been a band. And I think that that, yeah, when allegations like that come out, they are much more damaging. Yeah.

Do you think they can stage a comeback? Do I think they can stage a comeback? I mean, they're going to try. I mean, they're still playing big shows. They're still playing shows. Well, they're playing this record. I mean, yeah. And they're headlining big festivals.

So what I wonder, Rain is if a whole new generation coming up now is going to discover this record that doesn't know anything about any of that stuff or, you know. I mean, I hope they do discover funeral. And I hope there's like some kids sitting in a snowy Canadian town who here is. is it and is like, oh, this makes this sad, cold misery feel kind of beautiful. There are also some, I think, very legitimate reasons why you can't recapture those feelings from when this record first came out that have nothing to do with the accusations. I think, Rain, as you said, the whole world has changed, you know. But also the whole music landscape has changed. Indy rock is not ruling the roost anymore, right?

I mean, like, indie rock is not keen. bands aren't even anymore. I mean, you don't even see bands on the top of the charts, you know. And the whole way we discover music has changed, too. I mean, one of the reasons this album took off so much is because of the blogs, all the, you know, and pitchfork review, the nearly perfect score. Pitchfork gave it. And I just don't think that happens anymore. I kind of forgot about that.

Like, the pitchfork review that came out before the record. Yeah. And like, which people don't really do anymore, like putting the reviews out way before the album comes out. doesn't happen as often. And like the way that captured people's attention. Yeah. Like it feels kind of impossible. And also, you know, everything is streaming now.

Like you had to go get it still. Even if it meant going to download it, you had to actively go and get this album and put it on your, your creative Zen Media player and take it. That's why people read reviews because it's like, well, am I going to cough up what little money I have to listen to this? I have to read a review to tell me. Or use my limited space on.

might. Oh, yeah. Right. Or burn it on to my mini-disc in real time. Listening really wasn't frictionless. No, yeah. Until fairly recently. You had to put some kind of effort in to obtain music before.

And lay something down. You had to give something up. And now streaming free access to everything, it's like the only people really reading reviews now are people who are like fans and just want to like go a little deeper and understand the record. It's no longer the mask is trying to decide whether or not they want to. buy it. But when this, when the, in 2004, that was game changing to have a nearly perfect score like that. They were like the last glory days of like reviews making a big difference. Yeah.

One thought I had though was that, you know, like maybe we can't go back, but there are themes on this record that are forever. And, and I think some of those themes will resonate with everyone, you know, with early fans, new fans, whatever. Some maybe even more than ever now, themes of growing older, you know, the themes about the way you view the world changing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, for me, all, kind of everything that we've talked about in this entire conversation is captured in the song, and summed up in the song, Wake Up, particularly because of the lines, our bodies get bigger, but our hearts get torn up. We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust, and then the line, I guess we'll just have to adjust.

It's almost like they wrote this, knowing what the arc of this band was going to be over the next however many years, yeah, every good thing eventually turns to rust, and we're just going to have to adjust. It's a great song, man. There's a reason that song played in so many ads. Yeah. The song rules. Like, imagine being 17 years old and hearing that song and being like,

Oh, my God. This is what being an adult is going to be like. It's all going to be soaring choruses from here on out. And it was the end. Well, Raina Duris, host a World Cafe. Thanks so much for doing this. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. And Stephen Thompson. Always a pleasure, Robin. Thank you so much.

For NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's All Songs Considered.