arcade fire will rule the world

I'm sorry, I know this has been on hiatus but it's difficult to keep up in summer when the beach is calling my name far louder than the Internet does.That said... if there is one thing that can spark a revival, it's the new Arcade Fire album, the Suburbs. A friend secured the leak for me a few days before it's August 3rd debut and ever since it's been on repeat in my car, my iPod, my house... I can't get enough. Apparently, neither can the rest of the world; it hit #1 on the Billboard charts this week. Normally this might cause some uneasiness - nothing ruins a really great band quite like mainstream approval. However, if there's one band that can maintain their voice and style through popularity, it is definitely Arcade Fire.The Suburbs had considerable build-up for several reasons: one, the obvious excitement a new Arcade Fire album brings; their previous endeavors, Funeral especially, remain some of the greatest indie albums of our time. This leads to the second reason for pre-release hype: many questioned how a band that became successful for epic songs of mixed composition and unusual form could continue to be different when this would be third album in the same vein; that is, if their unusual production was what made them unique and this album was done in the same style, would it lose some of that uniqueness and become stale? But then, if they changed things up in an effort to be 'edgy', or rather, continue to be relevant, would they still be Arcade Fire? The mind, it baffles!

The circular logic was dizzying and, in the end, pointless. The Suburbs foray into lost childhood is poetic and poignant but never sappy or cliche. It twinges nostalgia with gentle, unobtrusive chords that progress into those stylistic Arcade Fire song-endings where the cymbals crash and the harmony swells and there is one final lyric and you feel it; it's that house you grew up in, uninhabited and holding nothing but memories of youthful optimism, now dampened by adult reality. Win Butler likes the word 'kids' (if there is any criticism of this album, it's the overuse of that word. and the word 'suburbs'.), and while Funeral was the youth's trumpet of setting forth into the world, The Suburbs is the wake-up call to their hibernating consciousness. The kids are all grown up, and they've figured out that things really aren't what they thought they'd be; shown with lyrics like "I feel I've been living in/ a city with no children in it/ a garden left for ruin by a billionaire inside of a private prison" from City With No Children or "strange how the half light/ can make a place new/ you can't recognize me/ and I can't recognize you" on Half Light I.
This leaves a depressing image, and if they had mirrored the music to match then the album would be almost unbearably sad. Yet it isn't; those swelling chord progressions and tapering, single-note outro/intros keep an optimistic energy flowing. Again, the wake-up call; all is not lost. There is realization of reality's emptiness on Modern Man and Rococo, a track that targets the naivete of intellectually condescending hipsters, and a thread of escapism from said empty life snakes it's way through the album via car imagery and the repeated line "in the suburbs I, I learned to drive/ and you told me we'd never survive/ grab your mothers keys we're leaving", which first appears in the opening song The Suburbs and then follows later in Suburban War. It's hopeful, and the generally uplifting beat keeps that alive.
Thus, despite the (supposed) potential for stagnation, the Arcade Fire delivered another epic album definitely worthy of the #1 standing. I would love to lavish more praise on it, but it is far better to just listen and understand. For streaming: www.myspace.com/arcadefireofficial