SOUNDCHECK

Arcade Fire


Neon Bible

(4 stars)

If we've seen it once, we've seen it a thousand times. Texas boy meets Montreal girl. Falls in love. Forms eight-piece band. Records album. Earns praise from Davids Bowie and Byrne. Wows Coachella crowd. Gets co-opted as theme music for U2 tour. Plays Saturday Night Live.

All right, so maybe the Arcade Fire's tale isn't all that typical, and second full-length Neon Bible only further distances the Canadian demigods from their Earth-bound peers, satisfying rabid anticipation for the follow-up to 2004's lionized Funeral. That first LP—along with the group's animated live shows—stimulated much "best band of the decade" clamor, yet frontman Win Butler, wife Regine Chassagne and their many mates meet the hype head-on with a sophomore effort that, while unable to transcend its predecessor, fits comfortably alongside it on the shelf.

Musically, Neon Bible feels very Arcade Fire, bursting with melodic urgency and violin-juiced weight. If your spine doesn't tingle as Chassagne harmonizes over the bridge in "Intervention," or your heart doesn't pound as "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations" builds for its turbulent second section, Nickelback has probably dulled your senses.

Whereas the lyrics on Funeral felt exceptionally personal—speaking of life and rebirth in the face of heart-wrenching loss—Neon Bible looks externally, reflecting on fame ("Black Mirror"), religion ("Intervention") and the pressures of workaday life ("Windowsill"). Though quite noticeable, the shift feels natural for a band forced to come of age in three short years.

On the whole, Neon Bible takes fewer chances than Funeral, eschewing the punky vigor of "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" and the dancey twist in "Wake Up" for the safer Springsteen detour of "(Antichrist Television Blues)." But given the come-on, get-crazy choices made by peers at the tip of their popularity bell curve (we're looking at you, Killers) the Arcade Fire demonstrate that sometimes, there's nothing wrong with giving your fans exactly what they'd hoped for.

Son Volt


The Search

(4 stars)

Time was, you knew what you were going to get from Jay Farrar. While ex-bandmate Jeff Tweedy has spent the last decade changing Wilco's lineup and musical style like so many dirty concert T-shirts, Farrar has pretty much stuck to the basics in his solo work and with Son Volt, his post-Uncle Tupelo incarnation—mournful, navel-gazing, sourpuss alt-country angst spiked with regret, about as playful as a German philosophy seminar.

But something must have snapped inside the dusty hayloft of Farrar's brain, because The Search features some of the most ambitious, wide-ranging and inspired work of his career. The most obvious diversion from the Son Volt formula, a Memphis-style horn section that lights up "The Picture," is just one of the many sonic awakenings heretofore unknown to the Farrar catalog.

From the soulful keyboards that carry "Automatic Society" and the title track to the chiming guitar chords of "Adrenaline and Heresy," the gauzy string section backing "Underground Dream" to the plaintive '70s steel guitar on "Phosphate Skin," Farrar reveals a side that's not so much experimental as flexible, and entirely appealing. He even tosses in "Satellite," a straightforward, post-punk rave-up that echoes "Still Feel Gone"-era Tupelo, a nod to his personal backstory that's as rare as it is welcome.

Chimaira

Resurrection

(3 stars)

In the hierarchy of the new wave of American heavy metal, Chimaira fall somewhere around the middle, not at the stylistic heights of Shadows Fall or Killswitch Engage, but more intense and uncompromising than the nu-metal bands they were compared to when they first came onto the scene in 1998. Their fourth album, Resurrection, doesn't indicate a likelihood to break out of that position, but it plants them firmly within the current hard-music movement, scaling back on the electronic elements so it's less Fear Factory and more In Flames.

Ten-minute epic "Six" aside, the songs on Resurrection are compact and direct, if fairly indistinguishable. Vocalist Mark Hunter doesn't have the melodic complexity or hardcore brutality of some of his peers, but he handles both singing and screaming effectively. The guitar work is where the band really shines, with some excellent riffage and solos from guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries. Given room to stretch out on "Six," they show themselves capable of remarkable musicianship.

Resurrection doesn't have much in the way of hooks, though, so while songs like "Pleasure in Pain" and "Killing the Beast" will get your blood pumping, they won't really stick with you afterward. But every movement needs its reliable second-stringers, and Chimaira fill that role admirably.

Maria Taylor


Lynn Teeter Flower

(3 stars)

The genre tag "sleepcore" could very well have been created solely to describe the swoony, pillow-stained back catalog of Omaha, Nebraska, duo Azure Ray. If the 2006 film The Science of Sleep strove to depict chaotic dreamscapes as real-life visual stimulation, Taylor and musical partner Orenda Fink's golden, drowsy hum provided the audio counterpart.

Taylor's solo debut, 2005's 11:11, came and went with nary a ripple. Perhaps indignant, she's upped the "pop" quotient of her ever-expanding folk-pop sound: Lynn Teeter Flower remains mostly quiet and barren on the surface, yet a steadfast, optimistic flicker burns beneath. Then there are the jarring jolts back to waking-life reality, in which acoustic guitar and banged-up piano give way to boot-tapping shuffle "The Ballad of Sean Foley" (a duet with significant other Conor Oberst), the unabashed indie rock of "Smile and Wave" and even synthy, sweaty dance beats in "Irish Goodbye."

But the more she changes as a musician, the more things stay the same. Big choruses and cute phrasing still have no place in Taylor's wistful little world, where rhythms derive from within and ambiance is king. If you've ever wished Jenny Lewis would go deeper, darker, and more direct, meet a girl named Maria.

Blackfield

Blackfield II

(3 1/2 stars)

Blackfield aren't your parents' pop duo. They probably aren't your older brother's pop duo, either.

The pair are Steven Wilson, leader of British art-metal proggers Porcupine Tree, and Israeli singer/songwriter Aviv Geffen. Blackfield II is their second release, and what Wilson routinely calls his "pop side project." Blackfield's music hardly sounds like anybody's side project, much less pop. The music is epic, sweeping and hypnotic—think late-'70s Pink Floyd, Bends-era Radiohead, shoegazing Cure and the semi-orchestral leanings of Queensryche.

Still, Blackfield knows how to sneak hooks into its lush soundscapes. "1,000 People" mixes Duran Duran's "Ordinary World" with John Barry strings. The result: a densely layered James Bond theme song. "Christenings" tells of a music fan who runs into a fading pop star at his local record shop. You think of Syd Barrett as soon as you hear the lyrics: "But I believe in you/'Cause I think that you'd want me to/Though I never really liked your songs, it's true."

The lyrics are clever that way, but it's the music that defines Blackfield. Always melancholy and filled with shimmering harmonies, Blackfield makes pop songs that thrive on atmospheres and texture. –Steven Ward