Send "Arcade Fire " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Bbc |
 If 2007’s Neon Bible was supposed to be Arcade Fire’s difficult second album, it didn’t show. Top marks from a cavalcade of critical tomes saw the Montreal septet’s sequel to their breakthrough debut long-player of 2004, Funeral, received with just as much reverence as its predecessor. So what of The Suburbs, arriving after another three-year period which saw its makers record in both their hometown and New York?Even on a cursory listen, a water-testing foray into its 16 tracks, it’s immediately apparent that this is an album unlike either that came before it. While Funeral and Neon Bible were great sets, their strengths laid primarily in a handful of stand-out selections – Wake Up and Power Out on the former, No Cars Go and Black Wave among the highs on the latter. The Suburbs appears to have been conceived as a whole in a manner considerably more studied than the band’s previous attempts. Its sequencing is perfect, the contrast between fiery punk number Month of May and the following acoustic strum of Wasted Hours the most prominent instance of how unlikely tracks are segued with uncommon skill. It’s a convergent collection, too, the opening title-track reprised come the record’s quiet climax, comprising an intro to its earlier, fuller version. Put The Suburbs on repeat and days could pass before the urge to change the record takes hold. If that sounds like excessive hyperbole, well, you’re probably yet to hear The Suburbs in full. Its stand-alone tracks, as played on radio stations the world over in anticipation of this release, far from tell the whole tale. Month of May, as implied above, is the album’s frenetic fulcrum, but stylistically it’s detached from the majority. Its opener sets a tone of sorts, but it’s one the band has some fun with, filtering influences ranging from Springsteen to Depeche Mode into songs that operate on a level of subconscious infiltration that surpasses the earworm qualities of Funeral’s most immediate cuts. Case in point: the propulsive Ready to Start, which somehow balances an air of anguish with triumphant exclamation; City With No Children takes lyrical cues from dark places but allows instrumental light enough to seep into the mix, creating an end product that’s like the finest Hold Steady song never written....full text |
| Nowtoronto |
| It’s common for heavily hyped albums to fall flat, but Arcade Fire’s long-anticipated third LP hits with the satisfied thud of met potential. Ironic, then, that its conceptual crux is the frustrated expectations of youth. Ambitious as always, the Montreal indie heavyweights explore everything from identity formation to the soullessness of modern culture over the 16 genre-spanning tracks (and 8 different album covers). Some might argue that the album is bloated and overlong, but it’s the denseness that makes it feel like such a Statement Record. Reflecting the concept’s expansive scope, the band’s stylistic repertoire stretches from the jaunty classic rockisms of the title track to the unexpected synth pop of Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). And while the stripped-down Month Of May displays a newfound directness, expect high-flying tracks like Rococo and We Used To Wait to inspire the same hands-in-the-air histrionics of Funeral’s Wake Up and Rebellion (Lies)....full text |
| Prefixmag |
| “Sometimes I can’t believe it/ I’m moving past the feeling,” Win Butler sings a few moments into the winsome title track to Arcade Fire’s excellent third album, The Suburbs. We know that this guy is never “past” any feeling. He’s all feelings, all the time. Just a minute after singing that line, he worries about a suburban war and begs for a daughter to show “some beauty before all this is done.” It’s business as usual in Arcade Fire land after three years since releasing Neon Bible. It just so happens that business involves making albums that are among the most emotionally resonant -- and not to mention classic -- of the last half-century. We've heard a million times that Funeral was about death, and it was at least widely understood that Neon Bible was probably about something else. (Religion? Probably.) This time out, the album title again indicates what Butler and company are concerned with. But it’s not the same soul-crushing suburbs of Revolutionary Road or its imitators. Butler positions the suburbs as a place that on one hand breeds nostalgia -- he and brother Will grew up in the outskirts of Houston -- and on the other leads him to worry about their uniformity. This is a sprawling, 16-track album about the emptiness of the sprawl, about how you never see kids playing outside in the ‘burbs, about losing friends to complacency, about modern man’s loss of individuality, about loneliness and fear and the me-first rush of modern life, about worrying that kids aren’t rebellious enough, about war and wanting to feel something. “Something don’t feel right,” Butler sings on “Modern Man,” “In line for a number but you don’t understand.” Those kinds of sentiments could come off as treacle in other hands, but they tie in thematically with multiple threads here -- accepting that wasted time is sometimes more meaningful than the stuff that “matters” (the lush “Wasted Hours”) and waiting for something better (the excellent “We Used to Wait For It”). And every theme in every song ties to another song in the same way. This is probably the most complete Arcade Fire album in that each song is but a part of the larger presentation. For all the over-arching themes, The Suburbs is the most rocking Arcade Fire album yet. The frantic grooves and sermonizing of “Month of May” form the first Arcade Fire song likely to inspire fist pumping. The Regine Chassigne-sung “Sprawl II” imagines a world where Arcade Fire meets Depeche Mode meets the Knife circa “Heartbeats.” The off-on rhythms and the group harmonies of “We Used to Wait” build to a lighter-ready conclusion, while the pavement-cracking drums and instructions to “never trust a millionaire” of “City With No Children” is the most Bruce Springsteen-like Arcade Fire has ever gotten, beating the Hold Steady at its own game. From top to bottom, it’s hard to imagine that the people who deride this band for being too theatrical can keep saying that now....full text |
Arcade Fire lyrics Music videoclips
|
| ||||||||||
