I was predisposed not to like ARCADE FIRE’S (the have seemed to drop the definite article) latest release THE SUBURBS for two reasons: 1) As we all know, I’m a natural iconoclast; but more importantly 2) an indie rock band with such widely affluent fans calling their album THE SUBURBS is the bombastic equivalent of Baz Luhrmann releasing a movie entitled AUSTRALIA -- who the fuck do you think you are? Why are you the spokesperson to something so vast and emotionally stirring?
And the album isn’t great by any means, if greatness is measured in catchiness, energy, sales potential, number of singles, or creative experimentation. But I do think it’s a success, not only because the “music” at Best Buy sharing shelf-space with THE SUBURBS is so egregious, but simply because of the atmosphere this album manages to create. I own few albums that so effectively instills a mood and doesn’t endeavor to puncture it just to illustrate how diverse-sounding and adaptable the band can be. Arcade Fire is content with their sleepy/dreamy/wistful Indian Summer contemplating fireflies in mall parking lots; doesn’t need the anthemic “Wake Up” or the elegiac “Haiti;” doesn’t need the turbo-charge of “No Cars Go” or baroque drama of “My Body Is a Cage” – no, not here, not on this car ride. All it needs is gas, and maybe some snacks for the kids.
Here instead we get music that is literally rococo: “Rococo” and “Modern Man” and “Half Light II” are asymmetrical, detour-prone, detail-obsessed suburban koans. They never soar, but they digest easy; succinct bonbons of feeling that Arcade Fire seems uniquely adept at doling out. The exception to this is certainly “Sprawl II,” which manages to both feel more in the spirit of FUNERAL and NEON BIBLE yet also serve as a likely and fitting culmination to the (probably over-long) journey that THE SUBURBS ultimately is. It’s an instant classic, wherever or not it’s even actually very good (awkward phrases like “shopping malls rise like mountains upon mountains” makes me wonder if this is the same band that scribed songs like the lyrically-perfect and utterly-simple “In the Backseat”).
So the album ultimately is quite limited in some ways despite its own obvious (and certainly thematic) sprawl. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to dismiss, rather like the suburbs itself it remains inoffensive, familiar and anonymous at once, affordable for all it offers even if the highs aren’t quite as high as in the big city. Like the band professed in the underrated b-side “(antichrist television blues)” they may not wanna live in a building downtown, but hearing the listlessness of these sixteen tracks, I’m not sure the suburbs are doing for it for them either.
