Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
The third episode of the neighborhood series is the most upbeat song we’re hearing on Funeral. The song may not include the ups and downs of the other tracks on the album so far but is surely a stadium shaker. Win Butler shrieks as he’s seeking for help in the midst of the darkness.
As mentioned on the title, the neighborhood is involved in a “power out” event. The indication of the term has a delicate semantic duality: one on the surface that talks about an event and one that stays in the shadows but seems to be the genuine point to the song. From the outside, and by the primary listens, the song brings you back to the North American ice storm of 1998. So read this piece of info from Wikipedia:
The North American ice storm of 1998 (also known as Great Ice Storm of 1998 and Great Ice Storm ’98) was a massive ice storm that struck a relatively narrow swath of land from eastern Ontario to southern Quebec to Nova Scotia in Canada, and bordering areas from northern New York to central Maine in the United States, in January 1998. It caused massive damage to trees and electrical infrastructure all over the area, leading to widespread long-term power outages. Millions were left in the dark for periods varying from days to weeks, leading to more than 30 fatalities, a shut down of activities in large cities like Montreal and Ottawa, and an unprecedented effort in reconstruction of the power grid.
The protagonist wakes up in darkness. First thing that pops in his mind is that it’s probably a minor temporary malfunction and it’ll pass and as he puts it into words it’s “not really something to shout about”. But then things start to get serious as he ventures out in the city where the darkness has started to linger. The kids are all out of their parents’ control. They’re swinging from the power lines and everybody’s out on the street searching for a source of light. The cause of the outage (in our hypothetical concept of the song) is the kids growing up in a strange storm that has caused them to become numb. So nobody feels the cold or the warmth of anything. People search for a leader (a plan), some claim they have found the light which appears to be nothing but a big lie. This helter skelter in the city could be caused by the things that were beautifully depicted on the first two Neighborhood songs, the story of the tunnels and Laika. Are these kids rioting on the streets like monkeys, the inevitable descendants of that gloomy and dreary zeitgeist?
Despite the song’s energetic and warm nature, it tells a sad tale. It can be the story a the generation’s youth drawn from personal stories (first two tracks) to wider scales (society), all lost and confused. Might sound irrelevant but it reminds me of The Offspring’s “The Kids Aren’t Alright”. Some fans have compared this song to Talking Heads “Once In A Life” time. I didn’t find many similarities but anyway. Some believe the song has references to the dusk of Christianity. But putting the reality and the concept behind it both juxtaposed and clear might give you the fullest meaning of this epic rock opus.
