Arcade Fire
Arcade Fire [EP]

Before staging the most festive and colorful funeral ever seen, Butler and company had chosen to leave their mark in a self-produced seven-track EP (we’re in 2003) named after themselves, just to convince themselves they could delve into music. And they ended up convincing themselves and an incalculable crowd of other people, with great and universal satisfaction.

In a few words: this EP is a good appetizer compared to "Funeral". It breathes the same countryside air (even more: in "My Heart Is An Apple" there's a pleasant bucolic interlude composed of aquatic and insect-like sounds of nature), the same disordered joy, the same scratched and tipsy sounds. "No Cars Go" and "Headlights Look Like Diamonds" are the two best things: the first could easily be in "Funeral", with that drum dragging itself marching amidst the usual forest of sounds and voices, with Win and Régine overlapping and chasing each other on roads strictly cleared of cars; the second, xylophonic and crescendoing, between lullabies and out-of-tune hymns, slowly opens like a flower, with the sound of the drum blurred and rustling as we like it. "The Woodland National Anthem" is also anthemic, to be sung while strolling through the fields with a guitar on the shoulder, while "Old Flame", in the opener, offers classic Arcade Fire: Talking Heads, accordion, unsteady singing, and so on.
It cannot be denied that there are some somewhat slapdash and raw passages, beyond the Canadians’ intentionally ultra-raw intentions; furthermore, it seems to me that the second track ("I' m Sleeping In A Submarine") could frankly have been omitted, in its remaining obscure even to Régine’s voice, which sounds like Björk at times but rather inconclusively so. Compared to "Funeral", the record comes across more quietly, without the power of a "Power Out" and the surprises-around-the-corner of many tracks. There are fewer (and less sensational) scene changes, fewer acrobatics, but the Arcade is all there, good and solid, and anyone who, after first listening to "Funeral", found themselves with a broad smile, will not fail, after listening to the EP, to sport the confident smile of someone who modestly knew where it was leading.