Arcade Fire offshoot steps into
their own spotlight with their second release
Hailed as a minor triumph in post-rock
imagination for its deft amalgamation of classical minimalism and
indie rock sweat on 2005’s Recording a Tape the Colour of the
Light, Bell Orchestre undeniably cleared their first hurdle of
crawling out of the spotlight fixed upon its sister group, Arcade
Fire. But four years later, the “post-rock” tag doesn’t seem
like a very fitting description for the group, as it's hardly
iconoclastic enough to be “post-” anything, and there’s little
in the band's sound that would mark it as belonging anywhere on the
“rock” spectrum, either. Free of those markers, Bell Orchestre
has made As Seen Through Windows, an album that proves that
this group is much more than a rock band that happens to play
instrumental music.
Opening with a chorus of oscillating
strings, horns and clicking percussion massaged into a massive wall
of reverb, “Stripes” is the kind of track that wouldn’t be out
of place on a Steve Reich album, as it dares to drop the listener
smack in the middle of a tangible and incomprehensible sonic
landscape with few obvious reference points. The following
“Elephants” provides a path out, immediately dropping into a lull
of innocuously echoing vocal layers and trumpets until a violent
eruption of distorted drums and violin squeals takes the arrangement
down a sinister side road. Eventually unraveling into rudiments of
plucked violin and melodica, it’s a startling nine minutes of
music, an album’s worth of ideas crammed into one mercurial track.
That’s a tough one-two punch to
follow, and the Montreal sextet does so by drifting through cascading
streams of bells (“Water/Light/Shifts”), frenetic, trumpet-led
stomps (“The Gaze”), and understated chamber pop (“Air
Lines/Land Lines”) that has far more in common with modern
classical composition than with any bands in the orchestral-pop
tradition. Despite the occasional thundering drums and sweaty
catharsis, this is cinematic music in the truest sense, meticulously
constructed and ingeniously textured, capturing a sense of emotional
depth and wide-eyed wonder as the arrangements trace a trajectory
through ethereal intros, slowly congealing climaxes, and rousing
finales. It’s a well-worn formula, but it never quite becomes
predictable here, with even the most abstract compositional
flourishes revealing their pop craftsmanship after a few listens.
No doubt, the presence of three Arcade
Fire members (Richard Reed Parry, Sarah Neufeld, Pietro Amato)
ensures that a similar visceral pulse runs through both acts. And
just as Arcade Fire refined its approach on its second release, Bell
Orchestre has become the rare pop band that can stretch out into
longer and more adventurous arrangements without stumbling into
navel-gazing or unnecessary repetition. The three years that have
passed since the band's debut has left Bell Orchestre a far more
confident act than the one that once served as the house band for a
Montreal dance ensemble, one that simultaneously expands and tightens
its focus with an album that ultimately inhabits its own place on the
pop-music spectrum.