Never Forget That Arcade Fire Released The World’s Loosest Christmas Record

Back in 2001, Arcade Fire were a group of Canadian unknowns, waiting to be discovered.

They were still three years off the release of Funeral, their beloved debut, and seven years off the release of Neon Bible, the record that would turn them into international superstars. In fact, they were just getting started, shaping their sound and rehearsing their baroque, haunted indie pop songs.

They were also a great deal more fun than their later reputation would make them seem. Far from a group of David Foster Wallace-spurting mourn-hounds, they were goofballs, enjoying all the things that come with having your first real band. To that end, one chilly December day the band assembled around a piano, got extremely merry, and recorded some Christmas songs.

The result: the most off-chops collection of yuletide classics ever assembled.

The album, A Very Arcade Xmas, was never intended for commercial release. It’s messy, and it’s loud. It starts in chaos, and only gets more chaotic — by the end it has totally fallen into drunken and smashed-up pieces.

But it’s also oddly wholesome. There’s no artifice, no pretension. It’s just a bunch of musicians having the time of their lives, and getting absolutely fucked on eggnog.

The band distributed copies of the record to friends and family for Christmas gifts. But, predictably, the songs eventually reached the digital tendrils of the internet, and became widely distributed online. In the early days of Napster and Limewire, the songs were hot property — and only more so after the band became a big deal.

In that way, the record isn’t just a time capsule of a period in a band’s history. It’s also a reminder of the way the music industry could be. In the current climate, ‘surprise’ releases are carefully timed by PR companies and massive entertainment behemoths.

Everything’s tightly controlled, from lifeless press releases disguised as down-to-Earth tweets, to honest-to-God relationships. The idea of a true surprise has been somewhat exhausted. A Very Arcade Xmas is a different thing altogether. It’s a real work by real human beings, designed for no other purpose than to make people happy. Weirdly, in hindsight, that seems major.