Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Album: The Suburbs

Artist: Arcade Fire

Bouncy retro guitars and groovy bass rhythms, beatles-esque chord progressions, mind drifting synthesizers and panicky thought provoking lyrics dominate the landscape of this 2010 concept album by the odd Canadian Indie rockers Arcade Fire. Although aren’t all true Indie bands this way?

My wife made me listen to this band. Sadly I have been a little too preoccupied with them since. In retrospect, a full in depth examination is inherently necessary in knowing whether they are truly talented or just some new hot Indie band. I “picked up” their newest album The Suburbs yesterday and gave it the standard headphones-only listen. The following is my analysis.

The first song instantly hits you, pulsing with its hooky bouncing piano and guitar in an intensely happy chord progression. This song, called The Suburbs, is absolutely great. It is easy to see why it is such a popular single on the charts right now.

The background synthesizer strings seem to be constant throughout the album. They bleed over into track two as well as most of the other songs and they only seem to lull for a while. The synth sets an eerie mood that overcasts the happy jump of the chord progressions. I like this technique. The shaky rhythms rival the pace of a feeble old man trying to run. This combination adds more dimension to the music, which makes it sonically pleasing in a fuller sense. It also makes it the perfect background soundtrack to your day to day.

The lightly distorted vintage guitars caress the ear and never quite let you go on track three. The harpsichord and weird progressions on track four make it a highlight. They seem to build tension with the progression. Tension is always good.

Track five is like a transcendentalist acid trip into slow continuous dementia. Congrats to the great northerners for achieving this. Track six has a “U2” vibe and the best lyrics on the album while track seven is like a radio add in Hitler’s twisted Reich Hell. With all the repeating guitar chords, synth and high female voice this song makes for a darkly lucid dreamscape.

Track eight continues the lucidity only this time with a prominent male voice. Track nine has a Tom Petty feel to it. Maybe I just don’t get it as the youngins would say but this song just lacks to me. There is not enough there for me. Track ten is straight up old school 70’s style grungy garage rock and I love it. It totally makes up for track nine. Maybe that is why they placed it there? Hmm.

Track eleven is just slow and boring. Track twelve is awesome. It starts with just acoustic guitar and drums then a piano and some synth (what else) join in. the song is great the whole way through and never loses the listener. I love the piano and weird guitar leads on this one.

Track fourteen is one of the best songs on the album everything about it is great. It actually sounds remarkably similar to ‘We can Work it out’. It is absolutely a highlight. 

Another song that hits you into wake rather quickly is Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Régine Chassagne’s vocals sear into your mind on contact. I also love the heavier bass beat and the weird 80’s pop synthesizer on this track. The synth on this one sounds like Cars by Gary Numan. The last song is an interesting outro to the album, but slow and I was always told to end with a bang.

Overall the album is pretty decent for a modern band and very decent for an Indie band. A lot of the bands these days do not have a large amount of talent beyond being able to play an instrument and sing. It is nice to see a band come out and be this daring. It is pretty amazing when more than half the songs on an album are bearable beyond one listen. Thank you Arcade Fire. On the contrary I have decided to give this album 3 stars.

Is it better than any Miley Cyrus album out to date? Absolutely. Is it as good as ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ or ‘London Calling’? Absolutely not. The Suburbs can easily fit into the top 10 for the year but soon it will fade away and everyone will forget it. In a couple years some “new” band with some “new” look will come out and all the preppy kids that are dressing Indie right now will be forced to change yet once again. Have fun with that, guys. Until next time, Seacrest out!