Illustration by Mike Simpson - Strong-and-Free
Update (March 29): Yesterday the band Arcade Fire completed the trifecta – winning Best Group and 3 other awards at the Canadian Juno awards – after bringing home awards at both the British and American music awards shows.
Arcade Fire won a Grammy award on Sunday Feb 13th for Album of the Year for The Suburbs. On Monday morning I was at the college cafeteria, and I grabbed a copy of The Toronto Star, which had a story on the Grammy coup, for this humble everyday band from Montreal.
I assume my audience is broad and you might either be a fan of the band or forgiven if you didn’t quite know who they are. This is the Bieber-age and we live in a sound-byte era of dance pop forgettables. Black-Eyed Peas were once an alternative band, and now they’re Super Bowl headliners. It is frankly hard to find signs of life in the mainstream that indicate that rock music still has a pulse. Even at the Super Bowl the only sign of rock music was Slash, the guitarist from Guns’n’Roses, playing his signature guitar line from the 1980s as a kind of sample in the midst of a Peas medley.
I don’t write about music in this blog very often and it gives me pleasure to do so now because I’m a musician and passionate about all kinds of tunes. And most of all, I’m stoked because Arcade Fire represents something to me akin to the rise of Nirvana that culminated in the 1991 heights of the Nevermind album – when amazingly for a brief time, everyone everywhere seemed to get rock music. The pulse was strong and the “Seattle sound” was on everybody’s lips, including the industry, which birthed and nurtured a whole slew of awesome bands on the heels of Nirvana. This was the pre-Blink 182 era. Before pop infiltrated the alt rock.
Recently I have to admit, I wasn’t really in tune with the Arcade phenomenon. I suppose I live in a slight bubble. I listen to my own music, which I create under the artist name “Mikooshka,” as much as I listen to other bands. I get my music from places eMusic, where a subscription can get you all kinds of novel and interesting new music, in all kinds of genres. I also happen to get my music from the same places as everyone else, namely YouTube and MySpace.
YouTube is where my brother and I stream a combination of our greatest hits jukebox and our new and recent discoveries: New Order’s live version of “Temptation” at BBC is one of my favorites (to the semi-annoyance of my bro), while Jeff hits the replay button on artists like Gorillaz, The Strokes, Rufus Wainright, and band of the hour, Arcade Fire.
A few days ago I found myself tapping my toes to the live video for the title track from the hit album “The Suburbs.” I have heard it about a dozen times and it didn’t initially appeal to me but it’s grown on my quite a bit. I think Arcade Fire represents a kind of sophisticated sound that requires repeated listenings to fully get into and get. (By the way, the video of The Suburbs is by director Spike Jonze, one of my favorites, but I prefer the live version where clips are projected on a screen behind the band – link at end of this post).
Another Canadian won on Sunday: Neil Young. He won for Best Rock Song. It was a long time coming for the 1960s and 70s guitar-rock hero and Canadian legend. Perhaps there is a synergy at play here. There’s something subtle and yet very powerful about the music made by Young and the Arcades. I’m not holding my breath thinking there’s going to be a major renaissance in pop radio, but in the underground there lurks a rock’n’roll pulse, that refuses to give in. Hell, even my own electronic music is taking a kind of cycle back to my rock roots. And if you are curious, you might check out a half-dozen other lights on the Canadian indie scene, including, but not limited to: the Dears, Hey Rosetta, and We are The City,
Links:
The Suburbs by Arcade Fire (Live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtbrY6QrgPw&feature=relmfu
Astronomers by We Are the City
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5GOIYj5giI
