FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
___________
I realise that I am a little late…
when marking the tenth anniversary of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs, as that happened on 2nd August! Regardless, I wanted to include it here and urge people to go and buy the album on vinyl. Arcade Fire’s first two albums – Funeral (2004), and Neon Bible (2007) – are classics, and there must have been a certain amount of pressure to exceed themselves on their third outing! If anything, they released their best album ever, and it is testament to the Canadian band and their incredible consistency. The Suburbs is a remarkably good album that has so many classic moments – from the title track, to Ready to Start, through to City with No Children. I like the fact there are lead vocals by Will Butler and Régine Chassagne, and they combine on a couple of tracks. The Suburbs won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards, Best International Album at the 2011 BRIT Awards, Album of the Year at the 2011 Juno Awards, and the 2011 Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album. It is considered to be one of the best albums of the 2010s, and I think The Suburbs still reveals glory and beauty a decade after its release! It is an album that one can play and get lost in; the songwriting is uniformly stunning, and the band are so tight and nuanced. The Suburbs’ lyrical content is inspired by band members Win and Will Butler's upbringing in The Woodlands, Texas (a suburb of Houston).
The band neither represent that area in a hateful or loving way: The Suburbs is an honest and open documentation with low and highpoints. I want to bring in a couple of interviews regarding The Suburbs, but if you are new to Arcade Fire, I would advise you to start at the beginning and work your way forward. To me, The Suburbs is their crowning achievement, so it is good to work your way to the third album and then keep going. I have been relistening to The Suburbs the last few weeks, and I can see why it is so cherished! The album is so complete and rewarding. One dives into the record and pictures themselves in the landscape and scenes. It is such an engrossing album, and I think we will be talking about it for decades to come. In their review of The Suburbs, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“Montreal's Arcade Fire successfully avoided the sophomore slump with 2007's apocalyptic Neon Bible. Heavier and more uncertain than their nearly perfect, darkly optimistic 2004 debut, the album aimed for the nosebleed section and left a red mess. Having already fled the cold comforts of suburbia on Funeral and suffered beneath the weight of the world on Neon Bible, it seems fitting that a band once so consumed with spiritual and social middle-class fury should find peace "under the overpass in the parking lot."
If nostalgia is just pain recalled, repaired, and resold, then The Suburbs is its sales manual. Inspired by brothers Win and William Butler's suburban Houston, Texas upbringing, the 16-track record plays out like a long lost summer weekend, with the jaunty but melancholy Kinks/Bowie-esque title cut serving as its bookends. Meticulously paced and conservatively grand, fans looking for the instant gratification of past anthems like "Wake Up" and "Intervention" will find themselves reluctantly defending The Suburbs upon first listen, but anyone who remembers excitedly jumping into a friend's car on a sleepy Friday night armed with heartache, hope, and no agenda knows that patience is key. Multiple spins reveal a work that's as triumphant and soul-slamming as it is sentimental and mature. At its most spirited, like on "Empty Room," "Rococo," "City with No Children," "Half Light II (No Celebration)," "We Used to Wait," and the glorious Régine Chassagne-led "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)," the latter of which threatens to break into Blondie's "Heart of Glass" at any moment, Arcade Fire make the suburbs feel positively electric. Quieter moments reveal a changing of the guard, as Win trades in the Springsteen-isms of Neon Bible for Neil Young on "Wasted Hours," and the ornate rage of Funeral for the simplicity of a line like "Let's go for a drive and see the town tonight/There's nothing to do, but I don't mind when I'm with you," from album highlight "Suburban War." The Suburbs feels like Richard Linklater's Dazed & Confused for the Y generation. It's serious without being preachy, cynical without dissolving into apathy, and whimsical enough to keep both sentiments in line, and of all of their records, it may be the one that ages the best”.
I wanted to bring in that review above, as I think a lot of great observations are made, and it sort of says everything – though I am going to bring in another review before I end things here. It is the detail of the compositions and the personal relevance of the lyrics that makes The Suburbs (among other things) such an incredibly connective and fascinating album. In their review, SPIN were moved by what they heard:
“This is a bigger, more byzantine Arcade Fire. Words that serve as master keys in one lyric become hushed whispers in another. Looped sounds of lonely traffic and needles stuck in endless grooves act as segues. “Jumping Jack Flash” echoes in the clarion-call guitars of “City With No Children” while the rapturous “Half Light II (No Celebration)” resounds with “Baba O’Riley” piano chords. Safety-pin punk and campfire folk share space on the punch-caress combo of “Month of May” and “Wasted Hours.” Butler’s consumptive croon in “Sprawl I (Flatland)” is rejuvenated by Régine Chassagne’s seraphic wail on “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” There are no wrong turns.
Radiant with apocalyptic tension and grasping to sustain real bonds, The Suburbs extends hungrily outward, recalling the dystopic miasma of William Gibson’s sci-fi novels and Sonic Youth’s guitar odysseys. Desperate to elude its own corrosive dread, it keeps moving, asking, looking, and making the promise that hope isn’t just another spiritual cul-de-sac. After all, you never know who might be coming in the next car”.
There is so much to love about The Suburbs, and I am glad Arcade Fire are still recording and putting out material – their most recent album, Everything Now, was released in 2017. I will leave things here, but do get The Suburbs if you can, or stream the album if not. It is such a tremendous album and one…
THAT started the 2010s in such style!