Funeral is the debut full-length album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released on September 14, 2004 in North America by Merge Records. It was given its title because several band members had recently lost members of their families: Régine Chassagne's grandmother died in June 2003, Win and William Butler's grandfather in March 2004, and Richard Reed Parry's aunt in April 2004.
Preliminary recordings for Funeral were made during the course of a week in August 2003 at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Quebec, and the recording was completed later that year.
The album produced 5 singles. The most successful, "Rebellion (Lies)", peaked at #19 on the UK Singles Chart. The album received wide critical acclaim and was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005 for Best Alternative Music Album. It was ranked eighth in Bob Mersereau's 2007 book The Top 100 Canadian Albums.
Initial critical response to Funeral was very positive. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 90, based on 30 reviews. Allmusic reviewer James Christopher Monger gave the album a rating of four and a half stars out of five. He described it as "brave, empowering, and dusted with something that many of the indie-rock genre's more contrived acts desperately lack: an element of real danger." Rock critic Robert Christgau gave the album an A-, saying that Funeral was "...too fond of drama, but aware of its small place in the big world, and usually beautiful."
Suggested listening:
No comments:
Post a Comment