Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Arcade Fire
The Suburbs 

****1/2

Two albums down, and Arcade Fire have arrived at the most enviable position; they now have the time and resources to do whatever they want. It’s telling then that what they want is to return to the neighbourhood setting of their groundbreaking debut. Where Funeral was closely focussed on individual angst at the reality of death, The Suburbs takes the long view – the band bring their observant lens to bear on home territory.

For co-vocalists Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, the dormitories of the first world are the site of deeply conflicting emotions. Half-remembered images of after school shenanigans play like a home movie behind the apocalyptic fatalism of reality: full-time employment, mortgages, two-and-a-half kids.  The Suburbs is as much an exorcism of personal cobwebs as it is a carefully aimed post-sub-prime attack on American complacency, and Wall St usury.

Butler is less precious lyrically than in the past, though direct as ever – in ‘City With No Children’ he asks, “do you think your righteousness / could pay the interest on your debt?” Musically, things tend towards the steady, complex mellowness of an album that will grow on you – punctuated by radio-ready amphetamine-fuelled, string-orchestra-backed dance anthems (‘Empty Room’), and hyper-accelerated electro whirls (‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’). And there is nothing more exciting than ‘Ready To Start’. All in all, it’s a bit top heavy – and things start to feel flabby at sixteen tracks. The emotional peak of ‘Sprawl’ I and II, for instance, are reached only after some leaden purgatorial dross… But all in all, you’ll pay those dues.




First published, and featured as Album of the Week, in The Brag, Iss. 374, August 9th 2010