arcade fire: pitchfork #1

1. Various Artists: Bright Lights, Big City [Soundtrack]

no mclusky and no liars and no oneida. that sucks. the pop stuff on there was pretty good - good to see annie so high, i do wanna check out the pretty toney album. i like the dj/rupture. i like camera obscura, i really like ac newman. disintegration loops is pretty good.

more things i wanna hear from this list:
mirah
futureheads
dfa comp
tv on the radio
mia/diplo

ahh christ. now the page isnt loading...

Where's MF Doom's Mmm...Food?

I guess so. I kinda prefer records that engage me. Most good music will do that.

those looking for instant pop hooks are obviously dissapointed

How about any hooks, whatsoever?

The Arcade Fire just sound like a semi-decent local band to me.

WELL IT SHOULD BE...

IT'S THE PIXIES (but not as good).

SO THE ANSWER IS...

no!

Arcade Fire made me feel physically sick when I first heard it, gave it several tries to appease friend, now consider it plenty decent. It's a "grower" - like the Cheeky Girls!

otm

perhaps I stated that wrong...there are no INSTANT hooks...but, indeed, the album is saturated with hidden hooks...hooks that take time to grow...like the Wrens album last year, the layers of emotional depth aren't apparent at first, but once you become aware of them, they are the type of hooks that never fade

"I kinda prefer records that engage me"

I'd much rather find an album that is not instantly memorable but unfolds over time...once Funeral finally exposes its inner substance, it is forever engaging

(xpost)

Feel free to visit Pitchfork's Wiki in the interim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitchfork_Media

115, 000 !

-- peter smith (reesewitherspoo...) (webmail), December 22nd, 2004 10:22 AM. (plsmith) (link)

Nothing more needs to be said.

Feel free to visit Pitchfork's Wiki in the interim:
If you click on the link to the Pitchfork site over there, that seems to work really well.

That might have something to do with the fact that nothing I've heard this year has really wowed me. Maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places, but I don't even have a top 15 this year, much less a top 50. Which if you know me, is highly unusual.

(ps - Islaja was in my personal top 50, though - thanks!)

Yeah, I thought you'd like Islaja. What else made your top 50?

it's just a good rock record.

"sung tongs" doesn't deserve #2, but animal collective probably does. i think a combination of word gettting out + re-issues of all the old stuff = AC finally getting acknowledged as a great band. and in a top 50 of a specific year, "sung tongs" is the vessel, regardless of it's worthiness. (sure it's great, but it doesn't compare to spirit when vanished in my humble o, and thus, i think it's AC that's #2 more than "sung tongs".)

not a bad list. yeah, it appears that 'fork is getting /.ed.
m.

I so have to hear this now.

this was my list:
1 Brian Wilson: Smile
2 Animal Collective: Sung Tongs
3 Bjork: Medulla
4 Excepter: KA
5 Devendra Banhart: Rejoicing in the Hands
6 Charalambides: Joy Shapes
7 Nellie McKay: Get Away From Me
8 Magma: K.A
9 Espers: s/t
10 Erlend Øye: DJ Kicks
11 Korekyojinn: Arabesque
12 Craig Taborn: Junk Magic
13 V/A: DFA Compilation #2
14 M.I.A./Duplo: Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol 1
15 Felix da Housecat: Devin Dazzle and the Neon Fever
16 R.Stevie Moore: Conscientious Objector
17 DILL: WYHIWYG
18 Felix Kubin: Matki Wandalki
19 Yoshida/Fujii: Erans
20 Dawn Upshaw: Voices of Light
21 Devendra Banhart: Nino Rojo
22 Soft Pink Truth: Do You Want New Wave…
23 Angel Molina: Pasada Professional
24 Hafler Trio: Normally
25 Fe-Mail w/Lasse Marhaug: All Men Are Pigs
26 Keith Fullerton Whitman: Antithesis
27 Squarepusher: Ultravisitor
28 Panda Bear: Young Prayer
29 Sagor & Swing: Orgelplaneten
30 Fripp/Eno: The Equatorial Stars
31 Faust/Dalek: Derbe Respect
32 V/A: Kompakt 100
33 Ruinzhatova: Close to the RH Kiki
34 Black Dice: Creature Comforts
35 Mouse on Mars: Radical Connector
36 Wolf Eyes: Burned Mind
37 Pan Sonic: Kesto
38 Superpitcher: Here Comes Love
39 Flying Luttenbachers: The Void
40 Sagan: Unseen Forces
41 V/A: Golden Apples of the Sun
42 Islaja: Meritie
43 Michael Mayer: Touch
44 DAT Politics: Go Pets Go
45 Dungen: Ta Det Lugnt
46 eX-Girl: Endangered Species
47 Agata: Spike
48 Fennesz: Venice
49 Liars: They Were Wrong So We Drowned
50 Charming Hostess: Sarajevo Blues

Now, none of this excuses them selling out three nights in SF next month in 20 minutes, but, as far as hyped indie goes, this album deserves it more than the strokes or interpol did.

(My friend has already constructed the new indie equivalent of the beatles/stones fued, as the Decemberists vs. the Arcade Fire. I think this fued only exists in his head though. But maybe there is something to contrast there).

I'm lucky in that all my '50s/60s/70s heroes were morally beyond reproach.

Hah, point taken!

Chappell Roan redeemed the whole SNL season imo. Chalamet doing obscure Dylan was fun too

bj otm

That wasn't directed at you, bird--just laughing at what a cesspool my own nostalgia draws from. Even Smokey Robinson now.

Your generations shitty people had better rhythm sections

heez i need to stay this focused all the time. you are the example. thank you.

That whole era has been tainted for me as something I can never be nostalgic for.

I still jam the first Strokes, Interpol, and YYYs albums, they remain great!

Loving the phrase ‘reputational upheaval’.

LCD's sequel to "Losing My Edge"

Only time I ever got into an out-loud verbal fight with someone was during an Arcade Fire show. This band has always sucked.

If they were good it would have been a fistfight.

Fistfights happen even when the band sucks.

Is there a fist fights at shows thread? I have a story

Is it true Heez got sonned by a wite kid over a AOL beef?

xpost start it, I've got a good one, too

i went thru a phase where i was kinda switched off from music but still aware of what bands were big or hyped - and would occasionally go and see a show out of curiosity or with friends

anyway i saw some terrible bands during this time

I don’t know if i would class Arcade Fire as necessarily terrible but i saw them maybe around the time of their 2nd album? And i have never felt so deeply that i was at the wrong party - all the audience in religious fervour singalong mode, and i was just standing there psychically distant from all this rapture, thinking “fuck this is pretty boring and uninvolving music”

they were dull and uncharismatic and the music had no magic

so i suppose actually yes they were terrible

people whose taste i respect really liked em tho (albeit back at the time - can’t remember the last time i heard anyone bring them up in conversation)

i think they were a legitimately great band circa 2003-2004

perhaps best not to ask for more (particularly of canadians)

never understood for a second what people heard in these goofs. also I get the impression their relationship with Merge ended less than ideally.

their relationship with merge seems pretty straightforward compared to that of spoon or the magnetic fields

Here's a great op-ed from a Montreal perspective.

https://therover.ca/opinion-arcade-fires-rotten-legacy/

Gotta say I don't miss the 2000 era of bands with 500 members as cheap shorthand for EPIC.

All of them 'hitting things'

Sad that Arcade Fire have become so white over the years.

Gotta say I don't miss the 2000 era of bands with 500 members as cheap shorthand for EPIC.

dud for cursing us with the millennial whoop “hey Jude”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2025/05/21/what-happened-to-arcade-fires-new-album/

Previously, the group’s debut effort, Funeral, stood as its lowest-charting success, and even that managed to rise to No. 123 more than 20 years ago. Since then, every one of Arcade Fire’s projects has cracked the top 10 on the Billboard 200. Three of them — The Suburbs, Reflektor, and Everything Now — hit No. 1.

It’s only been three years since Arcade Fire last debuted a full-length on the Billboard 200. The simply-named We arrived in May 2022 and peaked at No. 6. Now, just a relatively short time later, Pink Elephant doesn’t even mark a new low, as it can’t reach the Billboard 200 at all.

Pink Elephant does crack the top 10 on one other Billboard list this frame. It starts at No. 10 on the Top Album Sales chart with a little less than 6,200 pure purchases, according to Luminate. That sum, entirely in pure purchases, is enough to make it one of the bestselling releases in the country — but not quite large enough to bring it to the Billboard 200.

So much for the SNL effect.

Perhaps carrying on as normal was a mistake

i don't think people would care about this album even if the misconduct allegations never happened. from what i've heard of it, it's bad, and they are still firmly in their passe era. no one is nostalgic for that period yet.

they will be though.

Wait what does the Billboard 200 measure if not album sales? Sales plus streams?

album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA)

^^The sales charts are skewed a bit because SoundScan has become a pay-for service after it got bought by Penske Media. Many smaller retailers aren't covered anymore...not that it have necessarily helped them in this case.

More smaller retailers are covered now, due to Luminate using Street Pulse data for stores that only report to them (new development last year) and the return of weighted sales, which entails coming up w a multiplier to make up for the delta between reporting stores and actual number of stores (reinstated this year). Neither of these were the case last late Winter/early Spring, so, some records did suffer a bit.

This appears to have bricked on its own.

Their sales progression at the retailer I work for:
Funeral = 14K+
Bible = 7K+
Suburbs = 6.5K+
Reflektor = 2.5K+
Everything = 500+
We = 500+ (most sold on markdown)
Elephant = 16

Thanks for the update on sales data. I was going on stories from last year and the 'failure' of the last VW album (among other recent LPs that probably sold better at uncovered indies).

Yep. That came out when the indie reporting was an absolute mess!

Yeah, the VW album's peak last year sorta shocked me.

it didn't seem right

Their sales progression at the retailer I work for:
Funeral = 14K+
Bible = 7K+
Suburbs = 6.5K+
Reflektor = 2.5K+
Everything = 500+
We = 500+ (most sold on markdown)
Elephant = 16

― mr.raffles, Thursday, May 22, 2025 12:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lmao wow

I'm kind of surprised Funeral is so far out front, twice as much as the next. I thought Suburbs would've been close, especially given the broad mainstream exposure they were getting at that point.

As for Elephant, Jesus, I saw Maria Schneider sell more copies of her latest album at the last show I attended.

I assume Funeral came in at the tail end of physical media still being a Thing.

Suburbs was kind of a mainstream breakthrough (ALBUM OF THE YEAR GRAMMY) and was available everywhere that was still selling CDs/LPs, so buyers were buying, but not necessarily at whatever shop/chain cited here.

In other words, if you wanted to buy Funeral during it's first few years of issue, you most likely would have gone to an indie shop; a chain like B&N or Borders; or got it online. By the time of Suburbs, Merge had distro in place that added big box retailers and department stores like Target etc. Plus they made online deals: Suburbs was the only AF album I owned, mainly because Amazon had it for like $8 and I needed to hit $25 to get free shipping on something I wanted worse.

I bought Funeral at a Target in December '04 iirc

Well then!

I genuinely would have thought that Suburbs would at least top Neon Bible, but I guess that one probably sold tons of pre-orders and early copies after the buzz built from Funeral.

Looking at Wiki, they say only Funeral & Suburbs went gold stateside, while Neon Bible just fell short of doing so (the sales figure citations are pretty old, all predating the streaming era, so they could all be closer to platinum now if someone did an audit).

I didn't realize how big they were in the UK: three platinum, then two golds, and finally a silver for WE.

I needed to hit $25 to get free shipping

This was actually my primary means for exploring indie bands in-depth for about five years.

I have the first four AF albums and I bought all of them in charity shops. That's about their worth to me.

New album at No. 18 in the UK. Deacon Blue were at No. 3 the other month. AF Sr played the long game but they are officially more desirable in 2025.