Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (Merge)

Arcade Fire's career has been a very successful and ambitious one. Starting out on the very exciting debut Funeral, Arcade Fire established their very huge sound that including a large array of instruments that created a raw and very atmospheric layer of music that was never heard before. Following their 2004 masterpiece, in 2007 they released a more ambitious, orchestrated piece entitled Neon Bible. But of course anybody who is following the indie networks of music know enough about Arcade Fire's career, so I'll stop boring you.

Now three years following Neon Bible, Arcade Fire is finally back with a much more anticipated third LP The Suburbs. The title will tell all of the story of the album. It's a loose concept album about growing up in the suburbia of America and Canada. Beforehand to The Suburbs release Win and Will Butler talked about how weird it felt to move from California to Houston, Texas and how they interpret those feeling into The Suburbs lyrics. Indeed "City With No Children" probably shows this interpretation the most with lines like "Dreamed I drove home from Houston/On a highway that was underground."

The sound and instrumentation of The Suburbs is really where it may bring the album down. The production may be very good, but I feel it's way to compressed and deep with bass ("City With No Children") while some songs have the absence of the heavy bass and it feels hallow ("Half Light I"). The instrumentation is really disappointing, I feel that some songs have an idea down, but don't go anywhere. "Half Light I" has a continuous guitar note that goes nowhere, it sounds like it should go somewhere and build into good old Arcade Fire anthem, but that's just the problem, it doesn't. I feel like I'm about to get something good out of some of the songs on The Suburbs but it ends up I don't.

You could say that The Suburbs combines both elements of Funeral and Neon Bible. They stick to some good orchestrations that show towards Neon Bible ("Wasted Hours") and big, huge sounding anthems nodding towards Funeral ("Suburban War"). But even with some of the songs that have those elements, there are new more fresh approaches to their songs. "Month of May" has a very punk and garage element that is probably the most heavy Arcade Fire song to date, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" has a lot of electro pop influence with the very cheesy synthesizer which really drags a good Arcade Fire anthem down and "Deep Blue" is a very moody acoustic break that follows the footsteps of Neil Young.

Those more different approaches to their new songs are tenacious, but some are a hit and miss. The second half of The Suburbs loses the whole momentum of the album immensely. This may sound bizarre, but the first half of The Suburbs sounds like Arcade Fire, but the second half doesn't. But that's just me gripping about changes in sounds that I don't like. All the big indie artists have changed there sounds for the worst it seems like for me; Vampire Weekend tries to take a more artistic approach to their sound, MGMT is just psyching out into a psychedelic universe but The National are the only artist to really change for the better with deeper more emotional tugging sounds.

The Suburbs has good, immersing lyrics that tie you into the story telling of Win Butler suburbia childhood, but some songs are mediocre ("Rococo") while others are passionately big and classic ("Ready To Start"). You could say that hype might have killed The Suburbs for me, but I don't think so. While listening to The Suburbs I kept waiting for something in the music like The National's High Violet did, but Arcade Fire never delivered.

Overall: 8.0/ 10

Track Listing:

1. The Suburbs - 9.0

2. Ready To Start - 9.0

3. Modern Man - 8.0

4. Rococo - 6.5

5. Empty Room - 8.0

6. City With No Children - 9.0

7. Half Light I - 7.0

8. Half Light II (No Celebration) - 8.5

9. Suburban War - 8.5

10. Month of May - 8.0

11. Wasted Hours - 7.5

12. Deep Blue - 7.5

13. We Used To Wait - 7.5

14. Sprawl I (Flatland) - 8.0
15. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - 8.0
16. The Suburbs (Continued) - 8.0

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