The pre-noon sun that slants through the stained glass of Reverend Ohm's nave bathes the pews of his College Park church in a blue green. Ten miles south of Atlanta, Ohm sat with me in his empty chapel and listened to Arcade Fire's "My Body Is a Cage." The song boomed off the walls with natural slap-back echo and floated on visible specks of dust. When it finished, Ohm said, "That's some holy business." Then I played him the title track off their fourth album, Reflektor, and he said: "That business is far away from holy. You gotta take three buses to get back to holy from where that song comes from. But it grooves. I'd move to it." After the song "Afterlife" he said: "You know, I've never heard a deceased person say that what happens after death is bad. I think it's just a continuum. Man, I need to dust in here."

Then Ohm talked about what the brain does in a near-death experience. We agreed that Montreal-based Arcade Fire have a suspended-over-your-own-body quality to their sound, something lambent and at peace. Reflektor rises spiked with endorphins and heads toward a bright white light, of a disco ball. The band lives in melodies and etched euphonic conglomerations. For Reflektor, the Grammy winners took the baroque and wood from the casket of their previous releases and fashioned it into a dance floor. Sounds embody much more bubble machine than hymnal. Arrangements travel an arc lit by the husband-and-wife harmonies of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne. By the end of our listening session, Reverend Ohm concluded: "This is human music. I think I'd like these people if I knew them." Then he got up to get a duster. For this interview, Arcade Fire multi-instrumentalists Will Butler and Tim Kingsbury spoke from Montreal. They'd been home for a week and would leave for Japan in a few days.

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