After the release of Funeral in 2004, and the follow-up album Neon Bible in 2007, there was little doubt that Arcade Fire had a unique ability to bring us a complex, deep sound that many indie rock bands couldn’t come anywhere to duplicating. the Butlers took three more years in leading the development of the band’s third album. And if you thought there was no room to grow, think again…
The Suburbs is a 16-track compilation of beautiful music. With a diverse collection of instruments and mastering the fusion of 7-band members into an army of blissful sound, The Suburbs pulls you in. The gravitational force of the majority of the album is so overwhelming, this is sure to be an album we’re stuck on for quite awhile.
In a recent interview with NME Magazine, Win and William Butler describe the overall theme as “neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs [of Houston, TX]” but rather “a letter from the suburbs”. While all of these tracks are uniquely good in their own way, some stand out more than others. For example, Rococo is a masterfully orchestrated song that refers to youth culture using fashion, language, and materialistic objects to portray themselves as “trendy” and hip, while not understanding their own motives and thus causing them to make a parody of themselves. The irony is, Rococo was an 18th century art movement that really lacked true meaning. While able to draw on the parallels of it to describe the actions of modern-day teens, it does so in a deep, meaningful way.
City With No Children is another deep track that talks about a lot of things in just over 3 minutes. Win reflects on his own personal 20-something life while drawing on his success and correlating that to the Canadian viewpoint of what American government is doing on a global scale.
The resounding winner on this album is Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Moutains). In addition to a really different sounding track that features a predominantly electric feel syncing with power vocals from Regine Chassagne. Soundwise, this track has been compared to the midpoint of The Knife’s Heartbeats and Blondie’s Heart of Glass. This song is actually a dark song that speaks to the infinite nature of sprawl, and the narrator wants safety away from it. In other words, it’s the female viewpoint of someone so unhappy with her life, wanting a new beginning but yet can’t break away from the home that has made her who she is. It’s a very mirror image from the preceding track Sprawl I (Flatlands), which is a male voice indicative of recalling a memory of some place, perhaps home or just fondly remembered.
The only drawback that comes to mind is the overall deprecating nature of the lyrics. As the album soars over in an hour in length, this is by far the darkest, deepest of the three albums. While it’s done in a beautiful, social commentary sort of way, it can be argued that there is too much emphasis on negativity. In my opinion, that would seem like a decent overreaction, yet one could make an argument for it.
There is so much on this album, that even if it took another three years for Arcade Fire to release it’s next album, you could still find yourself making new discoveries about The Suburbs. Without a doubt, this is finest work yet from the Arcade Fire, and by a considerable margin.
