Quick Before it Melts

Tuesday 03 August 2010

QBiM SPiNS: Arcade Fire The Suburbs

You were expecting a choir of heavenly angels blowing trumpets and sounding a fanfare? Let’s be realistic here:  it’s just a new record release, not the Second Coming.  Still, the muted cymbal crash and honky-tonk-like piano plonking through the opening bars of “The Suburbs” feels decidedly understated as the welcoming to Arcade Fire‘s most recent domicile. Second Coming jibes aside, The Suburbs has the distinct title of being 2010′s most anticipated record so far, so we can be forgiven for expecting a bit of grandeur.  What quickly becomes apparent as you listen to The Suburbs is that, if Neon Bible was the aural equivalent of The Ten Commandments, then The Suburbs is The Ice Storm.  The former, a Cecil B. DeMille cinematic epic; the latter, a grainy art house film by Ang Lee.  Each unique in it’s own right, but masterpieces, both.

Like its predecessors Funeral and Neon Bible, The Suburbs is a thematic collection of songs that, in Win Butler’s own words, is “trying to connect where you’re from and where you are, to have that kind of makes sense.”  Where he’s from (for the better part of his adolescent life) is the suburbs of Houston, Texas.  Now he’s in Montreal as the front man for a seven-strong collective of musicians who’ve: a) been celebrated for writing the second best album of the 2000s; b) toured the world over and shared the stage with many of their musical idols; and c) lured the watchful ears of a rabid fan base and army of critics, ready to pounce and deconstruct every recorded sound they make.  Success, responsibility and dislocation would be enough to send anyone’s head spinning, but Butler isn’t just anyone.  He succeeds at “making sense” of the subject matter by approaching it from multiple perspectives.  The themes of modern youth, suburban ennui, and geographic separation tie each song together.  The songs are like chapters in a book about how we’ve been sold a dream and bought the dream, only to find out it’s defective after the warranty expires, so we’re left to make due with what we have.  The concepts are similar, but “The Suburbs” differs from “Suburban War”  which differs from “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” in lyrical content as much as they do in musical composition.

Arcade Fire sound like an unstoppable, musical juggernaut on this record.  The anthems of Funeral and Neon Bible have been replaced by honest-to-goodness rock songs, many of them teetering on the edge of 70s MOR, never going into the abyss of blandness.  “Empty Room” epitomizes the classic Arcade Fire sound: frenzied, euphoric, and able to send shivers down your spine.  The sequencing is impeccable.  Each movement (if you break it down by it’s vinyl sides) is a balanced microcosm of the record as a whole.  Initially, I felt that The Suburbs could probably stand a bit of editing, but in all honesty, I don’t know what constitutes as fat to be trimmed off.  “Wasted Hours” and “Deep Blue” are the closest thing to filler on this record, but because they’re thematically appropriate to the record, you’d almost hate for them not to be there.  After two or three listens all the way through, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s nothing wrong with the record; there’s something wrong with me.  I’ll just have to work it out myself, because in the end, the longer running time just gives the band room to explore the collision of 80s electro-synth pop and classic folk-rock sounds throughout (see the synth-pop sprightliness of “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” and the Springsteen-sounding “Modern Man”).

Regardless of influence, The Suburbs sounds undeniably like Arcade Fire.  There’s nothing half-assed, or half-cocked about it.  I liken it to walking through your childhood neighbourhood late at night during a power failure (where have we heard that before?), not knowing if you’re really there or if it’s all a dream.  The atmosphere, the music, the lyrics… it’s all just so right.  As a reviewer, I’m leery of this review coming off as a stream of hyperboles, not so much for fear of being wrong about it or appearing to jump the bandwagon, but out of fear that I’ll somehow diminish the band’s accomplishments.  Nothing I say or write here can convince you of it’s greatness.  You’ll have to get out of the city and go to The Suburbs and experience it for yourself.

The Suburbs is released today on Merge Records.

MP3: Arcade Fire “Month of May”
Myspace: Arcade Fire
Facebook: Arcade Fire
Twitter: Aracde Fire

Tweet

by J. Di Gioia | 2 Comments »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 8:30 am and is filed under MP3, QBiM SPiNS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.