Rock Band Arcade Fire and the Pluto in Scorpio Generation

 

 

The Pluto in Scorpio generation, those between the ages of 9 and 21, is turning out to be an interesting group. Pluto rules Scorpio and so both the planet and sign are intensified in the generation born while Pluto passed through the sign of the scorpion between approximately 1984 and 1996. Pluto is the god of the Underworld, and Scorpio—a water sign—relates to death, as well as deep emotional undercurrents.

 

You can tell a lot about a generation by the music they listen to in their youth, and one of the most surprising youth hits of the past year is a CD by a Canadian group called Arcade Fire. Their debut CD, produced by a small record label, has been heralded as an Internet phenomenon because of the way its popularity grew through Internet networks. Arcade Fire was scheduled to play in small clubs for their 2004 tour but after the release of their CD, growing popularity forced them to switch to larger venues far beyond the band's original limited expectations. As of November 2005, Arcade Fire’s CD “…has gone gold in both Canada and the UK and has sold in excess of half a million copies worldwide, a phenomenal number for an indepedant release with minimal television or radio exposure” (according to Wikipedia).

 

Arcade Fire’s CD is titled The Funeral, an appropriate title for a Pluto in Scorpio musical release. It is passionately elegiac, reflecting a brooding sense of death. The music is somewhat lightened by violin orchestration and soaring arrangements. A sense of gloom hung over the group during the year in which the CD was made, a year in which several band members experienced family deaths. Songs like “Une Anee Sans Lumiere” (“A Year Without Light”) and “Crown of Love” have a dark and brooding quality which seems to have captured the imaginations of college students.

 

The music, though dark, is different from some of the popular music in the late 1980’s, while Pluto was actually in Scorpio. 80’s groups like the Cure and the Smiths reveled in morbid depression. Arcade Fire manages to instill their funereal themes with a rousing passion. The somber tone of the music is also relieved with bells, strings, and soaring operatic arrangements.

 

One young reviewer prefaced his glowing review of Arcade Fire’s The Funeral with the following words, which also might serve as a pitch-perfect characterization of the Pluto in Scorpio generation:

 

“Ours is a generation overwhelmed by frustration, unrest, dread, and tragedy. Fear is wholly pervasive in American society, but we manage nonetheless to build our defenses in subtle ways-- we scoff at arbitrary, color-coded ‘threat’ levels; we receive our information from comedians and laugh at politicians. Upon the turn of the 21st century, we have come to know our isolation well. Our self-imposed solitude renders us politically and spiritually inert, but rather than take steps to heal our emotional and existential wounds, we have chosen to revel in them.” (Read the complete review)

 

Added on March 30, 2007: Arcade Fire have just released their much-anticipated follow-up CD, Neon Bible. As one Amazon reviewer noted, comparing Neon Bible to their earlier CD, “…it sounds darker, eerier, and thoroughly exquisite. They take the chamberpop sound to a stormy cliffside over the ocean.”

I’ve listened to Neon Bible a number of times now. It captures the spirit of the Pluto in Scorpio generation and Gen X/Pluto in Libra, as well as delivering a Capricorn tone—music for a serious age, filled with swelling Saturnine angst, and befitting the coming entry of Pluto into the sign of the goatfish. I should add that older generations, such as my own Pluto in Leo cohort, have also embraced Arcade Fire and helped to make their new CD #3 on Amazon's CD sales ranking. It's a band with very broad appeal. Audiences at their live performances are a complete generational mix.

My book, Cosmic Trends, has a section on the Pluto in Scorpio and Pluto in Libra generations, plus others, noting that music by Pluto in Libra groups like Green Day show that the “blindfolded scales-of-justice generation will always weigh the truth of relationships everywhere, including the relationship between citizen and government."

Other reviewers have commented on Neon Bible’s gothic tone. Some elements of Arcade Fire are almost a throwback to the late Pluto in Scorpio/early goth music of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, and New Order. Arcade Fire (led by the husband-and-wife team of Win Butler and Regine Chassagne) does not dress all in black or wear white pancake makeup, but their music has a whirling darkness to it. Many of the songs reflect a world where the choices are “a house on fire or a rising sea.”

The song “Black Mirror” is awesome. It made me think of feng shui and mirrors’ ability to distort, reject, fragment, or swallow. It’s also a commentary on the black mirrors of Capricorn surveillance: “Black Mirror, Black Mirror/ Shot by a security camera/ You can’t watch your own image/ And also look yourself in the eye.”

The heart of Funeral was a connecting theme of “neighborhoods,” and a rousing anthem about a neighborhood where the "power's out in the heart of man," urging the listener to “take it from your heart and put it in your hand.”

Neon Bible lacks this connecting redemptive force. However, one particular song, “No Cars Go,” is an inspirational cry that reminded me in part of the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life”— except that in “No Cars Go,” the crescendo at the end is heroic rather than cacophonous. The final saxophone coda in “No Cars Go,” unlike the lingering chord in “A Day in the Life,” is merciful. The lyrics, too, are hopeful: “We know a place…/ Between the click of the light/ And the start of the dream.” Leading into the final crescendo, background voices can be heard dimly shouting, “Let’s go!”

 

See also: Pluto in Scorpio Generation; Astrology Blog; War of the Worlds