Every so often I hear a song, and I see the song happen in my mind. It is usually the odd song--the one that doesn't quite fit the album, the one that is noticeably slower than the rest, odd sounds, new themes. It's the song that takes a life on its own. On the most recent Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible, I immediately identified the song as "My Body is a Cage".

The entire album is a grand, sometimes epic tidal wave of Springsteen-esque narratives. It all has a story. But only this song--the song shoved to the end of the album, the song with an elephant pace in comparison to the run-as-fast-as-you-can beat of most of the album--was cinematic. This song was a film, and I had seen it before. It played vividly in my mind every time the album reached that brooding 11th track.

It was the archetypal golden and dusty spaghetti-western scenario. There were the vast landscapes, the extreme close-ups of wrinkled eyes and sweat, and the burningly slow rhythm of anticipation before the gun draw. All of these things added up, and I finally realized this was a Sergio Leone film.

After a good 2 weeks of listening to this song many times a day, I had figured it out. I dug through my movie collection to find what I considered the archetype of western films, which so happens to be my favorite one, Once Upon a Time in the West. I flew to the end of the film and found it. It had the elephant pace, the extreme anticipation through incredibly long camera shots so signature to Leone's work, landscapes, and close-ups, all in the climactic conclusion to an epic story. The song and the film had everything, and I put so much of the credit to them. I'm just glad I was able to introduce the two to each other. Genius, meet Genius.

I definitely have a few more music films in my mind. Here's to hoping for the day I get a camera in my own hands.