Arcade Fire - Toronto Concert Review

Last night I attended the Arcade Fire concert at Massey Hall. I thoroughly enjoyed the show even though a lot of critics seemed to feel it lacked something special. I stood less than a meter from the stage and didn't think it lacked anything but what do I know, I guess I just didn't have expectations and went to enjoy myself.

One post can make a difference

A while ago I posted a little review about the latest Arcade Fire album Neon Bible. I personally don't think it's a great review since I'm not a great writer but somehow it's generated a huge amount of traffic to my blog. For a most of the past couple of weeks when you search for Neon Bible reviews on Google my blog was coming up 4th or 5th in rank, before the page fold, which has driven huge amount of traffic (I'm dropping but still on the first page).

For me this is the first time I've had this type of traffic and it's an interesting marketing experience. If you can write something that is both unique and on an interesting and topical subject you can drive significant traffic to your site, regardless of a previous reputation or "name". I don't image that much of the traffic will be sustainable unless I significantly improve the quality of my writing but it's been cool to see the traffic spike like this.

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible review

So I got a copy of Arcade Fire's much anticipated sophomore album Neon Bible this weekend, it doesn't get wide release until March 6th. This is one album I've been waiting for a long time as Funeral was my favorite album from the past few years. I'll say that upon initial listening I wasn't blown away, in fact I was slightly disappointed by what I was hearing but I've managed to listen to it 3 or 4 times now and I'll say that it gets better with every listen. One thing I can say for sure is that it sounds toned down. Funeral was often times a chaotic album, the band has about 8 members and play a couple of dozen instruments on the album, so hearing some of that chaos removed from their sound was at first a bit disturbing but the music is more subtle and layered. Neon Bible manages to incorporate a lot of Organ music into it which isn't your typical rock instrument but they manage to pull it off. Overall I'd say it's a very worthy follow-up and Arcade Fire will continue to grow but Neon Bible lacks a little of the raw passion that Funeral had.