1) Old Flame; 2) I'm Sleeping in a Submarine; 3) No Cars Go; 4) The Woodlands National Anthem; 5) My Heart Is an Apple; 6) Headlights Look Like Diamonds; 7) Vampire/Forest Fire
Hard to call this the meager beginnings given how big this sounds at times, but in the AF scale of things it's the humble beginnings. Everything you like about the band can be found here, just with a cosier tone.
Key tracks: "Old Flame", "I'm Sleeping in a Submarine", "Headlights Look Like Diamonds"
You can already hear it on this humble debut EP, which likely wouldn't get half the attention it's received if it wasn't for the album that followed, that Arcade Fire operate on Big Ideas and they were reaching for a Big Sound to go with them from the get-go. As far as low-key debuts go, the Arcade Fire EP (or Us Kids Know, as I've sometimes heard it called) is more ambitious than most, and certainly one of the more bombastic. Part of what makes Funeral so special and Arcade Fire such a force overall is the combination of personal songwriting with a decidedly anthemic sound you can sing along to with your brethren crowds; that goal has been there from the start, and in a lot of ways this is like a prototype for Funeral. Just cosier and less dynamic.
At this stage the big ideas are coming from a relatively inexperienced band who sound like they're recording this at their own home, and the general recording aesthetic matches this. Where Funeral would feature a quadrilogy of songs about a neighbourhood getting snowed in, the cuts here sound like what you'd expect from a band holed up inside a room during the cold winter. The tip-toe shuffling and piano-twirling "I'm Sleeping in a Submarine" and the world-weary"Heart Is an Apple" are natural born torchlight moments with an "(Acoustic)" tag tacked onto them, and "The Woodlands National Anthem" is mostly built around just vocals, an acoustic guitar and some assorted handclaps and random percussion, but it still sounds like there's an intent to fill the entire room with its sound. It's a band dreaming to be big yet not quite having the setup to go all the way, but they're doing the best they can with what they do have and that will goes a long way: even with the stakes lowered there's still a kind of grandeur to these could-be anthems.
The intensity that Arcade Fire are famous for is also present here already, and the best songs of the EP reflect that. Both "Old Flame" and "Headlights Look Like Diamonds" are high-speed and high-energy, the group putting their all into a couplet of songs that rush through with the joy and thrill of a new band finding their wings. "Old Flame" is a great way to kick off the EP, full of drama with its accordion and strings raising the wind in its pounding rhythm, but "Headlights Look Like Diamonds" is absolutely the highlight of the entire EP, Both guitar and glockenspiel riffs that are instantly imprinted in your head, a strong backbone of a thumping beat that explodes into a flurry as the vocals go crazy, and the inspired flicking between the tightening hook of the verses and the flood-like rush of sheer vibrant joy that is the chorus - it's the anthem the rest of the EP has paved the way for. At the end of the the journey the band lift off and become genuinely huge with the colossal crescendo of "Vampire/Forest Fire", starting out as a decisively moody americana ballad with synths and growing in intensity from thereon into a wall of sound where you get a glimpse of the furious show force the band would become famous for on stage.
That's kind of what you can expect from the EP - familiar traits but with a more grassroots tone. The anthemic heights are there, the expanded instrumentation beyond the usual rock band sounds rears its head frequently and both Butler and Chassagne's vocals have already found their signature tones (and Chassagne practically takes co-lead vocals throughout the EP). If you heard this before the band had released anything else, I imagine it would've been quite stunning; and even now, in a world where one will likely come to this after hearing most of the other releases, it's still plenty enjoyable even if the songwriting isn't quite the perfect sharpness yet. The only slight disappointment here is the somewhat flaccid version of "No Cars Go", a song that would go on to become one of the band's defining songs some years later when re-recorded for Neon Bible; and I guess that's likely the only reason it sounds disappointing because the version here already has many of the same ideas that would carry over to the re-recording, it just doesn't sound quite as regal and gorgeously gigantic as the later version does. It does beg the question if any of the other songs here would suffer from the same had they been recreated with a more refined touch later on, and I've definitely made amends with it over the years, but even acknowledging that it still feels a little off in that familiar-but-not-quite way.
Besides that, it's hard to really fault this, even if it's hard to praise it to high heavens either in the overall context of the Arcade Fire back catalogue. The Arcade Fire playing here are still an unrefined version of themselves, full of fire but occasionally uneven: as a first ever recording it's great and humongously inspired, but it's also obvious it's more of a launch board for future achievements than a completely realised work on its own. Still, the songs are good and occasionally honestly great, and you can detect traces of Funeral's magic throughout - it's almost like a more intimate flipside for that album. The band likely never imagined this would continue to have the kind of widespread release it does but I'm glad it's had the relative longevity, even if among the hardcore perhaps, because it's still a worthwhile listen.
Rating: 7/10
Physical corner: Gatefold with a fold-out lyrics sheet.
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