Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
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CD Details
Artist: Arcade FireEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2010-08-03
Music Label: Merge Records
Soundtracks:
- The Suburbs
- Ready To Start
- Modern Man
- Rococo
- Empty Room
- City With No Children
- Half Light I
- Half Light II (No Celebration)
- Suburban War
- Month Of May
- Wasted Hours
- Deep Blue
- We Used To Wait
- Sprawl I (Flatland)
- Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
- The Suburbs (Continued)
Music reviews of The Suburbs
Music Review: Like the subject matter, characterized by unmanaged sprawl.
Rating: 4 Stars
I often find myself startled by the number of indie rock fans I encounter who rank Arcade Fire's Neon Bible above Funeral. Why? I always regarded the album as being emotionally overwrought (bordering on contrived) and heavy handed. That's not to say I don't love a lot of the songs for their musical composition, but I do regard many of the record's lyrics as being overly dramatic and self-righteous with the way they frequently describe modern life as threatened by external influences (e.g. Religious Faith and Big Business). Said more plainly, while Funeral did a remarkable job of documenting the individual's experience of emotional suffering, Neon Bible's attempts at naming the sources responsible for this anguish came off as simultaneously bombastic, and a bit hollow.
That being said, I didn't have the highest critical expectations for The Suburbs. Despite many of these critiques, however, The Suburbs is an album that does an excellent job of avoiding many of problems I had with Neon Bible. Accordingly, it reflects some smart artistic moves made by the group, and most importantly, demonstrates the Arcade Fire as a band actually capable of change.
At sixteen tracks, there's certainly a lot of music on the album, and most of it's really good. Likewise, it's pretty much what you've come to expect of Arcade Fire: Highly expressive rock songs featuring the affected vocals of Win Butler (and occasionally Régine Chassagne) that receive garnish via unique orchestral flourishes and interesting instrument choices.
However, in contrast to the bustling, turbo-charged arrangements of their first two records, at least half of The Suburbs' tracks' are considerably more relaxed, beginning with the easy shuffle of the title track and "Deep Blue", to the patient folk-jam of "City With No Children", and the militant, slow building "Wasted Hours". Likewise, the languid nature of much of the album's material is thematically appropriate, given that the suburbs are generally seen as offering relief from the risks and stresses accompanying city life: Life in the suburbs is usually less fast paced, in addition to offering comforting distance (both geographic and psychological) from looming metropolises. Though you can't really expect Arcade Fire to make music that praises a subject uniformly, the suburbs represent a great thematic vantage point for Win Butler's descriptions of emotional unease.
There's also a noticeably self-referential quality to the album's lyrics, with Butler occasionally making (less than complimentary) lyrical nods to his band's eminent position on the indie music scene. The sluggish "Rococo" is stinging indictment of current trends in music fandom. In addition to describing treacherous windstorms impact on a Canadian community, "Month of May", Butler unexpectedly includes the observation that "the kids are still standin' with their arms folded tight", which is a juxtaposition inviting the conclusion that Butler views hipsters and Mother Nature as similar with regards to their merciless disregard for the efforts of others.
Located near the album's close, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" represents a clearly identifiable centerpiece. Bearing substantial resemblance to Funeral's "Haiti", the track features a lead vocal from Régine Chassagne, a four-on-the-floor drum beat, and a heavy use of electric organs and keyboards that evoke Caribbean environs. The entire affair is somewhat reminiscent of Talking Head's New Wave-gospel stomp, "Road to Nowhere", though "Sprawl II" (to its credit) is both more lyrically reverential and sonically expansive. The track is a triumph in the sense that despite its' pessimistic lyrics that depict the suburbs' as a source of social influence stressing undesirable uniformity, the song's music speaks to the satisfaction of resisting to conform, and the noticeable incongruence between the song's music and lyrics convey this oft-repeated lesson in a manner that proves neither clichéd nor trite.
In sum, The Suburbs is a very good album that will probably continue to be fairly well regarded within Arcade Fire's catalogue. Again, at sixteen tracks, the record is a bit lengthy. Though it's hard to say that much of the album's material is "bad" by any stretch of the imagination, it may lack some of the immediate payoff offered by the band's earlier efforts. The Suburbs may still feature a bit of the didactic sentiment found on Neon Bible, these elements are considerably less predominant, ultimately providing a listening experience more in line with what we want from Arcade Fire.
Description of The Suburbs
Written, arranged, performed and produced by theArcade Fire and co-produced by Markus Dravs, The
Suburbs was recorded around Montreal and New
York over the past two years.
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