You Can Listen To Arcade Fire's 'Funeral' From Midnight Tonight

Fronted by the husband-and-wife team of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, the Arcade Fire's emotional debut -- rendered even more poignant by the dedications to recently departed family members contained in its liner notes -- is brave, empowering, and dusted with something that many of the indie-rock genre's more contrived acts desperately lack: an element of real danger.

Funeral' s mourners -- specifically Butler and Chassagne -- inhabit the same post-apocalyptic world as London Suede's Dog Man Star; they are broken, beaten, and ferociously romantic, reveling in the brutal beauty of their surroundings like a heathen Adam & Eve.

'Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)', the first of four metaphorical forays into the geography of the soul, follows a pair of young lovers who meet in the middle of the town through tunnels that connect to their bedrooms. Over a soaring piano lead that's effectively doubled by distorted guitar, they reach a Lord of the Flies-tinged utopia where they can't even remember their names or the faces of their weeping parents.

Butler sings like Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood used to play, like a lion-tamer whose whip grows shorter with each and every lash. He can barely contain himself, and when he lets loose it's both melodic and primal, like Berlin-era Bowie or British Sea Power.

'Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)' examines suicidal desperation through an angular Gang of Four prism; the hypnotic wash of strings and subtle meter changes of 'Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)' winsomely capture the mundane doings of day-to-day existence; and 'Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)', Funeral's victorious soul-thumping core, is a goose bump-inducing rallying cry centered around the notion that "the power's out in the heart of man, take it from your heart and put it in your hand."

It's the sheer power and scope of cuts like 'Wake Up' -- featuring all 15 musicians singing in unison -- and the mesmerizing, early-Roxy Music pulse of 'Rebellion (Lies)' that make Funeral the remarkable achievement that it is. These are songs that pump blood back into the heart as fast and furiously as it's draining from the sleeve on which it beats.