To the Mediocre

There's a truly fantastic album that I should be reviewing. Hisato Higuchi's Dialogue is a 38-minute capsule of guitar and breath that's held my attention for a few months now, but for the past few days, two other albums have pushed it out of my mind. The Arcade Fire's latest album Neon Bible may be the best-selling, hopefully intentional, tribute to Bruce Springsteen ever performed. Almost any song off the record would fit perfectly onto Born to Run. The combination of earnestness and bombast sucks me in despite myself.

Like a good muso, I used to recommend Springsteen's Nebraska to people, claiming that it was Bruce's stripped-down masterwork, and yet I don't listen to it very often. However, each time "Born to Run" or "Thunder Road" or even "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" comes on I find myself happy and engrossed. Likewise, I want to clap and sing along with the Arcade Fire's "Antichrist Television Blues" even with it's heavy-handed Christian imagery. I do still laugh a bit when their transplanted Texan vocalist pines in "Windowsill" that he doesn't "want to live in America no more." Funny coming from the frontman of the biggest Canadian band of the moment.


Crooked Fingers Dignity and Shame doesn't pull off the tribute to a classic rock icon trick quite so well. Eric Bachmann sounds like he desperately wants to be a folkier Niel Diamond, and yet a couple of the songs hit me just right. "Sleep All Summer" demands repeated listens for its yearning and a couple of its lines. It certainly doesn't go in for subtlety. Our male narrator is hit with feelings "like a tidal wave", and I ask myself why I keep listening to this song. Earlier in the album, the equally strident power ballad "Destroyer" is a guilty pleasure, especially when the narrator states blankly, "destroyer..." before a ridiculous guitar solo emerges on top of the repetitive piano chords that ground the song until the fade out.