Customer Reviews

The Suburbs

5 star:		(121)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

After waiting for what seems like a millennium since their last official release, we finally get The Suburbs, an engaging indie rock record full of pop gems. Here's my track by track take on it...

The Suburbs - A weak start to an otherwise awesome album, this song was released as the first unofficial single. When I first heard this song before the album was released, it greatly lowered my expectations. It's terribly repetitive. (2/10)

Ready to Start - This song marks the true beginning of the album, in my mind. The Strokes-y drum and bass coordination kick-start the song and drive it into one of the most poignant, catchy choruses on the album. (10/10)

Modern Man - I love a good song with a time signature that throws you off then becomes one of your favorites. (9/10)

Rococo - With its chanted tribal chorus, this song brings to mind memories of their debut album, "Funeral." It's a good example of standard, epic Arcade Fire fare. (8/10)

Empty Room - This is my favorite song on the album, without a doubt. The frenzied strings lead you into the trap and then like the distortion kicks in and knocks you out of your chair. This reminds me of The Rentals. (10/10)

City With No Children - The Springsteen influence once again becomes apparent. Thank God they know how to use it. (8/10)

Half Light I & II - The first half is not as amazing as the second, but it serves as a good lead in. (6/10)/(8/10)

Suburban War - I've seen some people make the case that this album is overproduced (mainly due to tracks like this), but I'd have to disagree. It's well produced, but not overly so. I think this track a perfect example of the right amount of indie/pop production a great Arcade Fire song requires. (8/10)

Month of May - I'm not in love with this song. It reminds me of the grungier side of Yo La Tengo, but it sounds like one of their tracks I would skip. (5/10)

Wasted Hours - The vocal melody and lyrics immediately linger in your memory long after hearing this song. (9/10)

Deep Blue - The album starts to get a little sleepy at this point. During my first listen, it was harder to differentiate the songs toward the end of the album, which made them slightly less memorable. This song trots along at a blues bar pace but doesn't stay with you for long afterward. (6/10)

We Used to Wait - Things are still a bit worn out as this song plays, but a few interesting elements are introduced into the mix, such as a Modest Mouse-like guitar riff that noodles around in the piano hits. (7/10)

Sprawl I - Perhaps the sleepiest song yet, Sprawl I crawls around but its melancholy melody saves it from being a failure. (6/10)

Sprawl II - The alarm clock finally went off. This could easily be the next single. The catchy 80's all-girl vocals are infectious. This track is an obvious standout and an instant favorite. (10/10)

The Suburbs (continued) - Somehow, the lead-out with the same name as the lead-in is at least ten times better. How? I don't know. (8/10)

Overall, the album felt a little bloated at times. But if you sift through the slower songs, there are moments of musical brilliance to be found. Thanks for reading!

***A note to other people on Amazon who have given this album a rating of less than 5 stars: Don't delete your review just because some pretentious hipsters have been clicking the 'not helpful' button! They want you to delete your review!***

Arcade Fire has been mining the emotional turmoil of adolescence since its debut in 2004, and though the cause of that turmoil has once again changed, the message is, as always, the same. I'm not one of those people that thinks that everything Arcade Fire has done has been peerless and flawless: I think Arcade Fire is a good band that makes good albums with a handful of truly brilliant songs, nothing more and nothing less. The Suburbs is, as some of the song titles would suggest, a sprawling work, and not without its flaws, but there is plenty of reward for those willing to stick it out for the 60+ minutes. Perhaps working too tightly on the theme of "the suburbs," the album has a tendency to be repetitive, which is not surprising given the album's length and the number of Part 1/Part 2 songs on the record. Though it suffers from some of the same problems like the Decemberists' bloated The Hazards of Love, namely strict adherence to a not entirely warranted theme, the Suburbs sets itself apart by having a number of truly excellent songs. Modern Man and Sprawl II are definitely among the best songs Arcade Fire have written, but having a propulsive drive that demands stomping in time with the beat and belting out the words. It should have been obvious all along that Arcade Fire was not going to top their (somewhat over-loved) debut, Funeral, but on the Suburbs, the band has stayed true to its sound and made the logical next step.

First off, when this album was released I didn't really like it at first but then it grew on me, like most of Arcade Fire's stuff. Now I really like this album. It's very good and the 2 new songs and videos are totally worth it, although if you go to Arcade Fire's official website, you can buy the whole thing directly from them WITH the videos for only $4.50 so I recommend getting it there. Otherwise this is awesome.

Arcade Fire burst onto the scene in 2004 with their debut album, Funeral. Their grandiose indie anthems earned them glowing praise from critics and fans alike. With Win Butler leading on vocals and guitar, Arcade Fire's eclectic instrumentation and apparent influences, including David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, and Neil Young, made them stand out from the countless indie bands getting their start at the same time.

Recording their second album in a church, Neon Bible utilized a pipe organ, full orchestra and military choir to expand their sound even further. Although the mood of Neon Bible was much darker than the soul cleansing shouts of hope that burst through the depression on the surface of Funeral, Arcade Fire proved they were much more than a one off talent. A packed tour schedule consumed the band's time until early 2008 when the members decided to take a break, playing a few free shows later in the year in support of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, but ultimately staying out of the public eye.

Now, two years later, Arcade Fire is finally back with one of the most anticipated albums of 2010. Their third record opens with the title track, "The Suburbs," which finds Arcade Fire in significantly lighter spirits than their previous two records. The same band looking for an escape from the pains of life realized in their earlier years is now beginning to accept the conformity of suburbia with a new goal of providing their children with the best experiences life has to offer, safe from the agony they had to work through.

There is still, however, an internal conflict hidden within the band's acceptance of The Suburbs. On "Ready To Start," an energetic verse proclaiming "I would rather be wrong than live in the shadows of your song" shows the classic break-away mindset of Arcade Fire shining through while the following track, "Modern Man," brings the pace back down to the mid-tempo groove and finds Win Butler repeating "I'm a modern man" as if he's trying to convince the listener of something he doesn't quite believe himself yet. The musical mood swings continue as laid back tracks like "Rococo" and "Wasted Hours" are given "Empty Room" and "Month of May," two of the most animated tracks on the album, as neighbors. Although, on first listen, this pitting of tunes against each other may cause the album to seem sporadic, on further listens, the sheer genius of the track ordering and songwriting as a whole rings out.

The apex of the album occurs during "Suburban War." The realization of inevitable maturity begins to be accepted as Butler's earlier cry of "I would rather be wrong than live in the shadows of your song" becomes "I've been living in the shadows of your song." The truth comes out, denial becomes acceptance and the song's tempo doubles as the line "all my old friends, they don't know me now" is hauntingly repeated.

The Suburbs finds Arcade Fire taking a longing look at the naivety of their youth while looking forward to what the future holds. Where their first two albums leaned heavily on stand out singles like "Wake Up," "Rebellion," "Keep the Car Running," and "Intervention," The Suburbs is much more of a complete work meant to be taken in as a single, hour long journey between adolescence and adulthood. Longtime fans of Arcade Fire will always hold Funeral on a pedestal, untouchable by future releases, but just as children often grimace at being compared to their parents, The Suburbs is a masterpiece worthy of such an analogy.


Similar Artists: Talking Heads, Pixies
Track Suggestion: "Suburban War"

It starts with a deceptively simple sounding song but soon it floats into a haunting, dream-like chorus. After multiple listens, tiny details emerge revealing that there is a lot going on beneath the surface of the music, indeed this is one of the themes explored within the album. "At night the feelings swim to the surface." Small, suburban towns that appear grey and bleak at a glance conceal another world, take a closer look across the green lawns and faceless houses, something sits in the dirt and shines like a shard of broken glass, glinting. In the suburbs, past the wood-polished floors and vacuous lives, past the animal bones and yellow flowers and into the sunlight, there is a tiny glimmer of something like hope.

The listener is invited to "Grab your mother's keys, we're leaving..." and (to me at least) the journey through The Suburbs does feel like driving a stolen car through empty streets, surrounded by grey neighbourhoods, in a town with shuttered windows and swaying trees, slowly engulfed in sweeping whirlwinds of decayed leaves. On many of the tracks there is a huge swirling sound that moves through the songs like a living thing and makes you wonder, what is that sound, what does it represent? Empty Rooms has the sound almost as a constant, whilst during Ready To Start it appears then disappears, only to reappear near the end, a lonely sound, like wind through trees on a hot, July afternoon.

Modern Man, with its almost rockabilly sensiblity, features strange, subtle, off-kilter rhythms and builds to a beautiful guitar led climax, it sounds so simple yet there are many complex harmonics at play and some wonderful ghost-like chords that seem to float and glide, almost in the background but if you listen closely, they can be heard throughout the song.

Amidst what sounds like banks of synthesizers, we are informed of someone (the eternal outsider) being told to "Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock..." during the euphoric Sprawl Part II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) and yet, beneath its dark, electronic surface, Sprawl is joyfuly defiant in its celebration of life, clear in the line, "We rode our bikes to the nearest park, sat under the swings and kissed in the dark." There is also a call for peace here, a yearning amongst the garish shopping malls, the security cameras and busy city streets. A yearning for cool, quiet nights, a place far away from the shimmering neon lights, for a room where the wind blows a curtain through an open window and the moon sits remote in a pitch black sky, a need for darkness and the serenity found in solitude because sometimes the loneliness is not aching, sometimes it is a wonderful bliss where feelings really can "swim to the surface."

The Suburbs is a definite slow burner but repeated listens are rewarding (and essential) on an album so panoramic in scope, so colourful and deep, like looking at woodland at midnight with the wind swirling around you and ahead, all you can see, are mountains beyond mountains.

Confronting the ever-impending threat of death, Arcade Fire has never lacked angst or even outright anger in its music. "Funeral" is a very literal reaction by the band after experiencing the deaths of relatives while recording. "Neon Bible" apocalyptically outlined an emergent generation's fears of demise of their nation or greater society. With their latest release The Suburbs, the trend continues with an equally yet more localized destruction, this time focusing on crumbling pockets of isolated community. But rather than another version of accepting death, The Suburbs is more a declaration of war on dual fronts.

On the one hand, it is a not very subtle declaration against certain waning generational forces, namely the baby-boomer generation (as my wife BiancaNDM will strenuously assert, I must add). Songs like "City With No Children" describe the anger against millionaires rotting in their decaying private prisons, "Sprawl" visualizing endless mountains of illuminated shopping malls, where we are urged to "quit our pretentious things and just punch the clock", the insignificance of buildings built in the 70s that crumble without anyone caring, or worse, even noticing.

A double edged sword, the album is also a declaration of war on our internal forces. Generation X has now grown up, and has to face not only the excess of the boomers but perhaps the lack of our willingness to overcome the boredom of the suburbs and mature beyond ourselves. Indeed, in the title track, Win Butler sings of a desperation to avoid something worse than death, not only growing old but having a family as a "grown up". Furthermore, the songs touch upon a future unable to be prepared for: losing friends to adulthood, remembering the glory and perfection of our wasted time in youth, realizing it may have been better to remain a kid on a bus longing to be free than to be an adult and dealing with the all-encompassing sprawl. It has a definite `80s nostalgia but with a 21st century gut-wrenching epiphany of excess.

Musically, this is the tightest release yet by Arcade Fire. The vocals from Win Butler seem a little more constrained than Neon Bible, perhaps to rest his voice, but also to follow the psychological tension of the album. Regine Chassagne has expanded her backup singing and really perfects the vulnerability in Sprawl II. Admittedly, this is less Americana than previous albums, as the effervescent violin and volatile percussion is distinctly muted, nevertheless achieving its suburban atmosphere. There are too many excellent songs to list, but my favorites include "Wasted Hours", "We Used to Wait", "Modern Man" and the title track. The Suburbs is a really powerful album, a quietly desperate Brian De Palma suburban gunfight erupting within indiscriminate cul-de-sacs across the country, perhaps right now in your neighborhood.

I love albums that draw you in....you listen through once, a few songs hit you. You find yourself playing them in your head all day long. You listen again, different songs start to come to life. Soon, it becomes a go-to listen in the car, at home, during a walk on the iPod. There are different things to find, but there is depth, complexity, and always more to discover.

Well, this appears to be such a piece of music. When the first two teaser songs appeared on some websites - The Suburbs and Month of May - because they were out of context, it was hard to make sense of what was about to be released. But that first song actually sets up a remarkable experience - in a way, I consider this to be one 60 minute song with different episodes and moods and tempos, but an overall meaning.

Rather than repeat some of the excellent reviews already posted - the song-by-song analyses, and the very insightful review that equates the different songs to different periods in recent rock music history (a brilliant analysis), I will just say that this is the best 3.99 I've spent in a long, long time. All of the songs have merit, and some are positively infectious. It is clear that great care was put into the instrumentation - nothing is out of place, and just near everything works. Some of the songs are easy to connect to immediately - Ready to Start, Empty Room, Suburban War, and Sprawl II are near perfect and amongst the best works Arcade Fire have created. But even what appears at first listen to be a bit of a throwaway song like Month of May fits perfectly in the track order, and builds and adds touches throughout.

This music from Arcade Fire is a gift to us all - to all of us who have the patience to listen, wait, then be amazed. And to a fifty something like me, there are so many touches of nostalgia in different genres of rock I experienced that this music brings great joy and meaning to me. Bravo!


.....So, now I've spent over a month with this CD. Initially I gave it five stars and thought that it would age very well. My current feeling is that this is a remarkable album, even better than I realized, and it only grows in its profoundness with time. The songs I initially loved are now joined by those that took a bit more time - and listening to this entire album in one sitting is an amazing experience. It has joined albums like REM's Automatic for the People and Radiohead's OK Computer in music that will always be welcome to my ears, no matter how familiar the notes.

One more thing - there are a few YouTube channels that are dedicated to live Arcade Fire performances....I just hope I can see them in concert some day!

one more edit - because we did see them....small venue in Charlottesville, VA, before their Bonaroo show. So a few things - The Suburbs hasn't faded with time. There is still more to discover, even after countless listenings. What emerges now is nostalgia and wistfulness - this music reaches in and deeply grabs you. And about the live show - the energy they create is just unbelievable...on a sweltering summer night, they had a few thousand people on their feet and moving and dancing for nearly two hours. It was an experience my wife and I will never forget.

Being fifty-something....well let's make that 60
It takes me a little longer to grasp a recording with
the scope of Suburbs. I broke this down and listened
to the first 5 songs for awhile. Then the next 5 etc.
My feeling is that this is a great recording. The band
really has a mastery over the themes and lyrics they
put in their songs. They are in a class of their own
right now. No one is even close. Buy this record and
spend quality time with it. Do not try to "get it" all
at once.
Update May 2011. Saw the band live at The Woodlands
last night and they were sensational ! I know something
now that I did not know before: Regine is a great talent.
I always thought she was good, but after last night and
hearing "Haiti" and "Sprawl II", I am a new devotee to this
wonderful talent. She was electric !

Watching and listening to the evolution of Arcade Fire's music is amazing. From Funeral to The Suburbs, this band has come from quite literally an unknown underground indie band to the first stadium indie band. Their music is for people who enjoy listening to MUSIC. For people who care about lyrics as well as a sound you can tap your feet to. It is art. It's passionate. Listen to the passion in Win Butler's and Regine Chassagne's voices. Listen to them. Read the lyrics. Fall in love. I know I did.

While Arcade Fire's previous albums were very good, "The Suburbs" is consistently great from start to finish. It sounds completely organic: the songs get exactly the right treatment, the hooks are deep (but not immediate or cloying), the sequencing is impeccable, and the instrumentation is layered and nuanced without being dense or overproduced. Overall, the album exceeded all of my expectations, but certainly creates a lofty standard for their next outing. It's so gratifying to see a band with this kind of promise find their voice and continue to push their limits without trying too hard to impress. It's astounding to me that the album debuted at #1 -- perhaps there's hope for the music industry yet. Make no mistake: this is not the sound of a band selling out. It's the sound of confidence and growth.