The oblique lyrics are overwhelmingly ominous; the murky liner notes—with their flip-book images of a young girl on stage and costumed synchronized swimmers in inky water—look like production stills from a David Lynch film; and the music portends something sinister. Through Neon Bible, the band is seemingly sending a beacon to other reasonable people forced underground by the world's insanity. It's almost like a musical version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  Full text...

Many of Funeral’s parts are still in place on Neon Bible. Regine Chassagne and Owen Pallett’s robust string arrangements usher their songs from simple, maudlin indie roots to a cascade of largesse.  Full text...

Much more than just a collection of songs, Aracade Fire's second disc is almost a spiritual experience, albeit a dark one. The musical world the band created bares a striking resemblance to our own. It's the kind of place where god has thrown up his hands and abandoned his troublesome earthlings even as Butler pleads, "I'm asking you why!" on the song "Antichrist Television".   Full text...

Neon Bible is an ambitious stab at a grand Symphony, not entirely cohesive, but a very compelling listen.   Full text...

The songs gust and spread out, like huge landscapes hurtling into view.  Full text...

Somewhere between there (Funeral) and here The Arcade Fire seem to have got big. Really, really big. "Sell out weeks at Brixton Academy in thirty seconds flat" big. "Trade a kidney on eBay for a ticket in a church" big. "Anticipate second album more than Gary Barlow anticipates breakfast" big... "Receive predictable critical backlash in response to sophomore release" big?  Full text...

Canadians' new testament to the world takes on epic proportions  Full text...

Neon Bible is so successful because it showcases big ambition without ignoring the small things, which are present in the band's focus on the personal in its lyrics (even when those lyrics initially seem to be about abstract concepts or an entire culture), and, again, in the imperfections in that beautiful voice. If Neon Bible is a Hollywood blockbuster, then it's that rare one that not only features A-list actors and great special effects, but complex, sympathetic characters as well.   Full text...

Arcade Fire have leap-frogged the sophomore slump with their latest chapter in their still-young promising career. Put your faith in the Neon Bible.   Full text...

Some Funeral devotees may be disappointed by the more straightforward approach on Neon Bible, but their numbers will likely be easily replaced.   Full text...

Angry, embittered, and paranoid, but often generously empathetic in their points of view, they target the government, the church, the military, the entertainment industry, and even the basest instincts of the common man.  Full text...

There is something oddly intriguing about the Montreal-based sextet, with their onstage costumes and penchant for performing unamplified in the middle of the audience - an aura of the unknown that seems all the more remarkable given the current desperate shortage of mystique in rock music.  Full text...

An extraordinary entertainment.   Full text...

Bold Bible.  Full text...

No one performing music today sounds like them, and few can communicate the beauty of pain.  Full text...

Arcade Fire may be deeply troubled by the darkness they see encroaching, but still they burn very brightly indeed.  Full text...

Sounding like Bruce Springsteen in a hair shirt, (Antichrist Television Blues) casts Butler as a hard-up parent watching a television talent show and praying that his daughter be spared the travails of his own life by becoming an American Idol.  Full text...

Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible is an album luscious of misery; it’s fully and deeply rooted in foundations rich in the dramatically maudlin and endearingly melancholic. It’s a gathering of individuals wearing frowns ‘pon their brows and tears in the creases under their seen-it-all eyes.  Full text...

The Arcade Fire follow up their debut with an album that is even more grandiose. Although the songs are excellent, the production is great and the album is very consistent, it occasionally suffers from being too big, loud and dramatic.  Full text...

Neon Bible isn’t quite the revelation that Funeral was; its newfound embrace of worldly concerns often borders on the embarrassing, and the reverberation threatens to swallow the songs whole.  Full text...

Neon Bible is an aggressively gothic record, explicitly so in the pipe organ that soars over the hunger and wreckage in "Intervention." More intriguing are "Black Mirror" and "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations," which somehow combine the oppressive dread on Side Two of David Bowie's Low with the church-bells-in-the-rain reveille of U2's Boy.  Full text...

The music of Neon Bible is rarely anything less than uplifting.   Full text...

Neon Bible is the first step to The Arcade Fire becoming the band everyone wishes they were.  Full text...

On Funeral, Arcade Fire tried to answer grief with fantasy and joy, with astonishing results. Neon Bible, on the other hand, is like that moment several months after your family member passes away, when the denial fades, and the real, true grief sets in. There are no happily-ever-after codas. Such is life. We go at it alone.  Full text...

After the funeral - the apocalypse. Second coming of Montreal troupe, designed for stadiums and the end of the world  Full text...

Neon Bible is certainly not as instantly arresting as its precursor; there are no immediate rushes of euphoria incited by these tracks - as the likes of Power Out had previously stirred - nor are there as many spine-tingling-builders in the vein of Wake Up. What there is, however, are eleven tracks that will inevitably divide fans' opinions.   Full text...

Ultimately, Arcade Fire is a fizzle.  Full text...