Neon Bible by The Arcade Fire

Neon Bible, Arcade Fire's second album, was released by Merge in March 2007, reaching European shops a day before North American ones, and the Montreal band made most of it inside a church they had bought and fixed up in Farnham, Quebec. You can hear the room: the band produced it themselves, and it swells and echoes as if it were built for the rafters.

Win Butler and Régine Chassagne lead a crowded lineup, with Jeremy Gara on drums for the first time and Sarah Neufeld's violin now part of the core. "Keep the Car Running" gallops, "Intervention" looms, "Black Mirror" broods. Most critics loved its grandeur, though a few found it distant and overblown. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, a sign of how far indie rock had travelled into the mainstream, and won the Juno for Alternative Album of the Year.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.