Song: "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
Artist: The Arcade Fire
Album: Funeral
Year: 2004
Length: 4:48
Label: Merge Records
Rating: 9.7 (out of 10) via Pitchfork for the album
The raves for the album were almost universal, and in the span of the three short years since the debut full-length for the Canadian collective founded by Win and Regine, the band have become superstars in the indie rock world, their native Montreal, and at least briefly in the typically ignorant greater United States (after follow-up Neon Bible debuted at #2 on Billboard's charts earlier this year). I was slow to join the choir of lovers until I heard "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)," the third track from the album that Sirius Left of Center was playing at the time I first got satellite radio (and my new car), back in the fall of 2004. "Neighborhood #3 (Power's Out)" still isn't among my favorites and I don't know why I didn't love the simply majestic "Wake Up" back then, but I fell in love with "Tunnels" from my first listen and never looked back. The vast leap forward in indie rock music of recent years may not have entirely begun with the release of Funeral, but Arcade Fire definitely wrote the archetype of almost every beautiful piece of music that has been released since 2005.
As for the song itself, I'll let Pitchfork do the talking...
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" is a sumptuously theatrical opener-- the gentle hum of an organ, undulating strings, and repetition of a simple piano figure suggest the discreet unveiling of an epic. Butler, in a bold voice that wavers with the force of raw, unspoken emotion, introduces his neighborhood. The scene is tragic: As a young man's parents weep in the next room, he secretly escapes to meet his girlfriend in the town square, where they naively plan an "adult" future that, in the haze of adolescence, is barely comprehensible to them. Their only respite from their shared uncertainty and remoteness exists in the memories of friends and parents.
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" currently holds the number three spot on Rate Your Music's "Top Singles of the 2000s".
It's my #29 Favorite Song of All Time
And if the snow buries my, my neighborhood.
And if my parents are crying
then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours,
yeah a tunnel, from my window to yours.
You climb out the chimney and meet me in the middle,
the middle of town.
And since there's no one else around, we let our hair grow long
and forget all we used to know,
then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow.
You change all the lead sleeping in my head,
as the day grows dim, I hear you sing a golden hymn.
Then we tried to name our babies,
But we forgot all the names that, the names we used to know.
But sometimes, we remember our bedrooms,
and our parents' bedrooms,
and the bedrooms of our friends.
Then we think of our parents,
well what ever happened to them?
You change all the lead sleeping in my head to gold,
as the day grows dim, I hear you sing a golden hymn,
the song I've been trying to sing.
Purify the colors, purify my mind.
Purify the colors, purify my mind,
and spread the ashes of the colors
over this heart of mine!
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