Funeral

While Arcade Fire were recording this album in Montreal, their family members kept dying. Régine Chassagne's grandmother died in June 2003. Win and William Butler's grandfather, the jazz guitarist Alvino Rey, died in February 2004. Keyboardist Richard Reed Parry's aunt died in April 2004. The album got its title from this accumulation of loss. And yet for a record built on grief, Funeral sounds almost unbearably alive.

The band recorded at Hotel2Tango in Montreal on a tight budget, self-producing the whole thing and playing whatever instruments were available: violin, accordion, hurdy-gurdy, French horn, xylophone, orchestral timpani. The opening track "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" was recorded with a guitar mic placed on the other side of the room by accident, and when they listened back, the distant, haunted quality of the guitar sounded so exactly right that they kept it. The drums on "Wake Up" were recorded by Wolf Parade's drummer, drafted in specifically for the session because the song needed something massive at its center.

When the album came out, Pitchfork gave it a rapturous review that sent it into the mainstream press overnight, and David Bowie bought every copy he could find at Tower Records in Houston and mailed them to his friends. On your first listen, start with "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" and let the whole suite run. The album builds from quiet bedroom longing into something that sounds like a hundred people in a field all singing the same thing at the same time, and by the time you reach "Wake Up" you will understand exactly why that happened.