Neon Bible Tracklist
Arcade Fire followed up their breakthrough 2004 debut with Neon Bible, a set of songs that pushed the dour, bombastic sound to a darker, more baroque extreme. Though many of the tracks, such as “Intervention” and “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations”, are fixated on a noble, Job-like suffering, the group never shy away from cathartic crescendos, with the Springsteen-esque “Keep the Car Running” and the charging “No Cars Go” reaching the most ecstatic heights of their career to date.
On December 15th, 2006 the band started to send out ‘spam’ e-mails teasing the album title. The same very day Zane Lowe played the studio version of “Intervention” on BBC Radio 1. Moreover, you could hear the song by calling the number 1-866-NEON-BIBLE ext. 7777. Two weeks later, this number would play you “Black Mirror”.
On December 26th Arcade Fire were set to release “Invervention” on iTunes as a Partners in Health charity single but accidentally “Black Wave/Bad Vibrations” was uploaded instead. The song was removed quickly but went viral anyway. Win Butler reacted to the leak:
I guess it is sort of charming that we can send the wrong song to the whole world with a click of a mouse… Oh well.
On January 4th, 2007 the rough artwork was uploaded to the band’s MySpace page but taken down immediately.
Two days later, a YouTube user NoreenBauble
(sounds familiar, huh?) uploaded a bizarre video entitled “Juno Award Winning Guitaris”. In the video, a masked man with a megaphone announces the tracklist and the release date. The man is introduced as Richard Reed Parry, but the back of the chair reads “Win Butler”. The video also features snippets of songs from the album.
On January 11th “My Body Is a Cage” and “Ocean of Noise” leak.
On January 26th Neon Bible leaks.
On March 5th, 2007 Neon Bible is released.
