Montreal quartet looks to set

When indie rock legend Lou Barlow announced that a band called The Arcade Fire would be following his solo act one summer night in Chapel Hill, his tone was one of disbelief: "I heard their sound check this afternoon, and they’re good," he said, shaking his head. “Really, really, f---ing good.” Perhaps his surprise was due in part to the fact that this was a free show. It’s more likely, though, that Barlow simply wanted to prepare the Sebadoh fans that had come to hail him for an act that would truly wow them. After The Arcade Fire’s first song, most of the audience shared Barlow’s disbelief. This band, slightly nerdy, with accordions and xylophones and violins about the stage, had come from nowhere and completely blown away the unsuspecting crowd at Local 506. Nobody saw them coming, except maybe for Barlow.

The Arcade Fire formed in Montreal, Quebec, in 2003. Frontman Win Butler met Regine Chassagne after moving to Montreal “on intuition,” having never before visited Canada, and the two began quietly writing songs together. Soon after, Win’s little brother Will left college in Chicago to come join his brother in Montreal, and Win and Regine made the band even more of a family affair by getting married later that year. After gaining instrumentalists Richard Parry and Tim Kingsbury and drummer Howard Bilerman, The Arcade Fire began recording what would yield their album Funeral, due out Sept. 14 from the Durham-based indie label Merge.

Funeral is an album of young loves, neighborhoods, naming babies, and older brothers. Behind these youthful themes, however, the album is an homage to the band’s ancestry. Named in honor of beloved relatives who recently passed away, including Win and Will’s grandfather, Funeral melds modern rock with something familiar to the point of nostalgia, like an old book from childhood being dusted off and reread with more experienced eyes. The opening track, “Neighborhood #1” is a pulsing song that is immediately stunning. The climax of the album is the anthemic “Wake Up,” which is at once drivingly aggressive and delicately beautiful, with strings and guitar working together with a proficiency that rivals the likes of Built to Spill. Overall, the high points on the album far outnumber the lows, and its cohesiveness and consistency make Funeral the birth of a promising young group.

Right now The Arcade Fire are lurking somewhere backstage in the indie rock world as one of its best kept secrets. But, with an impressive debut album and one of the best live shows around, they are a secret that is simply too juicy to keep from spreading like wildfire.