Number Three

Let's get back on this horse. Continuing my 'Top Five Most Influential Albums Evah'...




I'm not sure I can fully articulate the impact Funeral had on me the first time I heard it.

Arcade Fire hit me at exactly the right time. I was looking for something without even knowing it; I can't say it's a coincidence that I found the album via Pandora just a couple of months before Di and found each other. Beyond the timing though, Funeral did something transformative -- it restored my faith in the new.

My musical tastes (hell, my world view) had become, well, jaded and staid. Maybe if I'd woken up to the rut I was in a bit sooner Arular would have filled this slot instead, but Funeral ended up being the bit of genius that picked me up by the scruff of the neck and gave me the good metaphysical shake I needed.

Funeral woke me up (*cough*) to the fact that there were people out there still finding new ways to be brilliant and crazy and dangerously transcendant. And Funeral led me to the Secret Machines, and MIA, and even obscure little stuff like Tilly & the Wall because suddenly I realized that there was new music out there worth finding.

Funeral also, finally, killed radio for me. It's not that Arcade Fore wasn't getting radio play, it was that radio had nothing to do with me finding them, and that hearing, say, Rebellion (Lies) sandwiched between Sum-41 and whatever else the hell The Edge was playing back then made the contrast between what commercial radio wanted me to listen to, and what I wanted to listen to, excruciating.

Above it all though, Funeral is just a joyous explosion of love and tears and pure undiluted humanity that makes my heart a little bit bigger every time I listen to it.

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