Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Two years later, there's not a music lover (nor a hipster wannabe) that doesn't love "Funeral", Arcade Fire's first full-length album. It's not difficult to understand why, being one of those records that defines a generation, such is the power and strongness of the emotions transmited by its songs, like a celebration of love and urgency in its innumerous forms. With their second album, it was easy to disappoint, but that definitely doesn't happen, right on the contrary. More studied and elaborated, I would say that there was a lot of ambition put in Neon Bible's recording sessions, as it's obvious that every sound was carefully inserted in here to build a feeling of grandiosity. True, this makes it less fresh and spontaneous, but in the end that doesn't matter a tiny bit, because the intensity is not taken down. Why? It's difficult to put in words, but it seems to me that the secret behind this guys music is the love they feel for it, a love that is palpable from the first until the very last note, and probably the ultimate reason behind the goosebumps felt at each listen. As for the title, it's really to be taken seriously: Neon Bible is to be heard like being in a very intense and cathartic religious ceremony, where we even have the church organs, the angel choirs and the emotional explosions. And after it, we can't exactly understand what's just happened, but there's a smile in our face. And I'm not even religious... Amen. (8,5/10)