Neighborhood #2 (Laika) Lyrics

Lyric discussion by aelad 

Cover art for Neighborhood #2 (Laika) lyrics by Arcade Fire

Thank you for putting your point views, it is very inspiring. Here is mine. While the other neighborhood songs are sung by the individual who struggles in his "neighborhood", this one is the voice of the neighborhood, and the family. It's a unifeid voice, sung by all the younger siblings, about the older, different one. Aalex is different, perhaps weak or ill ("bit by a vimpire") and doesn't get along with the envoierment's demands ("if you want something" etc). He is their Laika (hawler, in russian), who was nourished in the sole purpose to be sent to her death for the common good. They endure Alex wierdeness ("caught his tears in a cup") and now demand him to go for what they dim as a "great adventure" "for your own good", but is really "for the neighorhood". Though they try to present it at first as something good, we realise in the vampire's paragraph it comes from an angry place ("gonna make him drink it), and like Laika, who did die and dried up, we know by their cynical wishes he will never come back (at least, not as himself).

I don't think Alex is violent - he denounce his family (the pictures, the letters) who treat him like that. Also, it is his daddy who "starts the fight". It is true he is being presented a dangerous boy becuase that's what he is, in the eyes of "the neighborhood" - because he is different. It is actually the neighborhood who is violent, convincing itself that its "fights" are part of the good neighborly order, making even a domestic violence being more welcome than Alex.

The Laika aspect sets the Russian tone. With that in mind, Alexander was Vladimir Lenin's older brother who became a revolutionary against the Czar before Vladimir did. Alexander clashed with his family who were mostly still monarchists and left them behind to fight in a terror cell against Czarist rule. He was caught and hanged for his deeds by the authorities which in turn set Vladimir on the path to revolution.

So yeah, that's my two cents. It could be about Lenin.

My Opinion