A Giant Dog Cover Arcade Fire

A Giant Dog at The Saint back in July

Neon Bible

I spent about a year from the end of 2004 through 2005 with Arcade Fire's Funeral in my car's CD player. 3 years later, the band released the follow-up, Neon Bible; and, ever since, I've gone back and forth between those two albums as my favorite Arcade Fire record. Neon Bible definitely contains some of my favorite Arcade Fire songs like "Keep the Car Running," "(Antichrist Television Blues)," and "Intervention."

The stuff I listen to has changed a bit over the last 10 or 12 years. And, maybe, I've drifted away a bit from those Arcade Fire records. One of the bands I encountered and fell in love with over that time is A Giant Dog. Like Funeral and Neon Bible, the last two A Giant Dog albums (the excellent Pile and Toy) came out on Merge Records. As part of the label's 30th anniversary celebration, A Giant Dog recorded a full-album cover of Neon Bible. Subscribers to Merge's 30th anniversary vinyl series (a group that includes yours truly) received their copies on purple, marble vinyl earlier this week. At midnight on September 20th, the rest of the world will be able to stream the album in full.

In a press release, A Giant Dog lead singer Sabrina Ellis says, "Recording a cover album, we felt like actors in a movie. Taking someone else's lines and embodying those emotions, and expressing those ideas through our own selves, made us portals of human expression… and that's why the album artwork is an open butthole.*

*The awesome butthole artwork was conceived by our drummer Danny and made possible by our friend Jennine Turow."

I hadn't spun or pressed play or whatever on Neon Bible in a long time. A Giant Dog imbue this classic with their inimitable, all-out, soul-baring, heart-filling style. They take something that I -- a lot of us, probably -- know backwards and forwards and give it a fresh edge and vitality.

Check out A Giant Dog's take on "Intervention," and stream their whole cover of Neon Bible at midnight from wherever you like to do that sort of thing.