ARCADE FIRE - The Suburbs (Merge)

The Arcade Fire started their career producing what is, by general consensus, one of the most important and scene defining indie albums of the last decade. "Funeral" tapped into the grandiosity of post-rock, and its thousand members on stage playing varied and eclectic instruments, planted it firmly within the traditional indie rock framework and came out the other side with something that sounded like Modest Mouse crossed with Bruce Springsteen. The album's grand arc explored childhood and mortality seriously but in a celebratory manner, and found the band at their most life-affirming and hopeful.

"Neon Bible" followed and was an improvement on the band's sound. Turning from the personal to the political, the band took on topical themes of religion, war and the general psychosis of the post-9/11 American landscape. Some saw the album as heavy-handed, but in a musical landscape that was dishearteningly quiet in the face of one of the country's darkest decades, "Neon Bible" was a beacon of sanity. Even with it's depressing thematic thread, musically "Neon Bible" thrilled and uplifted. You could dance to "Keep the Car Running," and find release in "Intervention" and, of course, the granddaddy of all anthems, "No Cars Go." Even if the band were bordering on the overblown grandiosity of U2, they sounded pertinent and exhilarating. Vocalist Win Butler hadn't reached the self-righteousness of Bono just yet, instead he sounded like a young man scared and disgusted by things that should scare and disgust any rational human being. The album cemented the band as one of indie rock's biggest acts, and the one most likely to cross-over into mass popularity.

Now the band has released their much-anticipated third album "The Suburbs", and for the first time in the band's career they sound bitter and cynical. Too cynical, I am afraid, to make "The Suburbs" enjoyable enough to listen to regularly. As to be expected there has already been much overpraise of the album, and oddly most of it has run along the line of something like this: '"Neon Bible" was too serious and political, "The Suburbs" is a welcome return to form and it's about childhood, so it must be hopeful and life-affirming,' or something similar. Nothing could be further from the truth. "Neon Bible" was an outward looking album of redemptive anthems and communal ballads, "The Suburbs" is the band's most negative and navel-gazing work to date, sorely lacking the hope and cleansing experience of their previous albums.

Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with artistic expression as cynical and bitter sounding as "The Suburbs," but those who enter here should abandon all hope. Don't take my word for it, listen to what Butler has to say on the album's title track: "I want a daughter while I'm still young, I wanna hold her hand, show her some beauty before all this damage is done, but if it's too much to ask send me a son." Personal aside; this lyric almost made me weep when I first heard it. I can directly relate to what Butler is saying. I actually got my wish, and as the father of two young daughters, have tried to show them as much joy and beauty as possible, but there is a foreboding I feel about the world they will inherit. Given the very real possibility of global environmental and economical collapse, I deeply fear for their future, and that has, in turn, made me incredibly pessimistic at times. Needless to say I can relate all too well to Butler's dim view that even with the promise of new life, damage and demise are just around the corner. The point is that he may be more cynical than ever, but Butler is telling uncomfortable truths throughout "The Suburbs". The question listeners must answer for themselves is how much bleak reality they want to go with their morning coffee and music. Add to Butler's dread-inducing lyrics an incessant humourlessness and you have the makings of the least enjoyable "good" album in years (and yes, ultimately, it is good for the most part).

Thematically, and Arcade Fire are all about themes, "The Suburbs" is about expansion and decay. Whether it is the expansion of the suburban village throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and it's demise into ghosts towns brought on by overextended credit and foreclosure, or whether it is our own expansion further and further away from childhood marching toward our own personal foreclosure, or society as a whole buckling under entropy, "The Suburbs" covers it. Early on Butler makes it clear what it's all about when he sings "when all of the walls that they built in the 70s finally fall, and all the houses they built in the 70s finally fall, it meant nothing." There is a futility throughout the album that undercuts all of the songs here, even when there seems to be glimmers of hope. One of the album's many highlights "Ready To Start" finds Butler and the band bouncing along fine together to create a rousing soundtrack moment, when he sings "if the businessmen drink my blood like the kids in art school said they would, then I guess I'll just begin again." It's one of the album's few anthematic moments, but whatever hope Butler is still offering is quickly cut short by the very next song "Modern Man" when he sings "I was almost there then they pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere."

Not all is doom and gloom, at times Butler engages in the most distasteful of rock star posings - condescension. One of the albums greatest musical pieces is also its most offensive lyrically. "Rococo" is nothing more than an example of a band biting the hand that feeds it. It's a bitter slam on the indie/hipster culture that makes up Arcade Fire's fan base. Named after an artistic movement in late 18th century France that is often viewed as an expression of the shallow excesses of French royalty and upper class, the song is about how equally shallow the "modern kids" are. Sadly the song itself is the most shallow thing here. One could go on all night about what a hipster is or isn't, which in itself is an absurd exercise, but for all of their appropriation, it seems that the driving force of hipster culture is a culmination of post-modernism where it all; the past, the present, the future, means nothing ultimately. Oddly this seems to be exactly what Butler is saying throughout the album. One could argue that a hipster is a punk stripped of his idealism, and so what? Where did those ideals get anybody, except as bitter as Butler sounds here? So what if the "modern kids" dress up their nihilism in bright colors and "words they don't understand"? At least they recognize it's all bunk in the end. In some ways "Rococo" is an example of a tension that seems to be present in Butler's world view. Even in the face of what he knows to be futility Butler is struggling because he still wants his ideals. He wants so badly to maintain his idealism that he sounds most bitter when recognizing it as an increasingly untenable position. "Rococo" is Butler ripping apart people basically because they lack idealism, as Butler's own idealism appears to be falling apart like everything else in "The Suburbs." In many ways "Rococo" sounds more like Butler struggling with himself than the "modern kids." Even if that piece of dime store psychology is wrong, it is still an unforgivable song lyrically, and one that makes me think Wayne Coyne was right about the band treating people like shit.

A couple of other tracks fail lyrically as well, but for different reasons. "Deep Blue" and "We Used To Wait," are Butler at his most heavy-handed. Both songs are basically about how technology has disconnected us from our humanity. Radiohead did this better and more intelligently over a decade ago, and whereas Thom Yorke became the voice of our disquiet, Butler sounds kind of ridiculous. "Deep Blue" refers to the computer chess program that defeated chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997 (the same year that "OK Computer" was released coincidentally), and is basically a commentary on how technology is encroaching upon our lives. Very original statement that. "We Used To Wait" is literally about how we used to hand write letters and how now because we don't, we seem to have lost something. Again, nothing original here and nothing that really goes beyond the surface of the existential situation technology has created in the manner that Radiohead did all those years back. So no, "The Suburbs" is not, contrary to the BBC's hyperbole, better than, or even in the same league as, "OK Computer."

"We Used To Wait" does contains one of the album's most crucial lines that sum up Arcade Fire's entire raison d'être. The line is simply "now our lives are changing fast, hope that something pure can last". That, in a nutshell, is what Arcade Fire are all about. They yearn for the innocence of childhood, the innocence of idealism, the innocence of conquest and expansion, but find themselves in the midst of damage and decay where everything falls apart and the center cannot hold. They are still looking for some hope, some purity, some light in the dark, but after a trip through "The Suburbs" that quest seems increasingly futile. By the album's end the band is asking for nothing more than to "please cut the lights," reflecting a desire for a return to a primativism that only the worst, most desperate, kind of idealist could believe in. All and all it's a pretty drab affair.

Oddly enough, musically this is the band's most accessible record to date. With the exception of very few tracks the band has pared down their sound to create taut rock songs. Gone is the grandiosity of "Neon Bible" and "Funeral" and in its place is something leaner and catchier. So why the long face? It's Butler and his self-serious delivery of dour lyrics, which are often at odds with what his band is doing musically. Songs like "The Suburbs" "Modern Man" and "City With No Children" swing and groove underneath Butler's existential angst. Ultimately that tension is what saves the album, but one can't help wishing that Butler would learn to lighten up just a little and recapture some of that synergy between band and singer that made a song like "Wake Up" from "Funeral" the classic it has become. Arcade Fire, the band, sounds at the height of their power musically. They sound as cohesive as they did on "Neon Bible," but more relaxed, making for an incredibly satisfying musical experience.

But here there is a caveat as well; the album is overlong and sags horribly in the middle. The first six tracks finds Arcade Fire at their best, even on mellower songs like "Modern Man", but once the "Half Light" suite starts the band sounds like they are on autopilot for nearly the entire mid-section of the album. The only bright spot is "Suburban War," one of the album's darkest musical tracks, and also one its best. Its a downbeat epic track that starts with gently picked guitar and brushed drums only to end with war toms. Here, more than anywhere else, that synergy between singer and band exists, even if it is in the service of the exact opposite mood of "Wake Up". It isn't until "Wasted Time" has finished doing just that the band sounds alive again with the acoustic stomp of "Deep Blue". Thankfully the song marks a return to form and the band finishes out the album strongly, especially on "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" which sounds like a disco remix of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill". The song benefits as well from Regine Chassagne's vocals who sounds as joyful and uplifting as Butler sounds resigned and cynical.

"The Suburbs" is a difficult album to love, but one that is not easy to dismiss either. Four of the tracks are absolutely expendable, Butler sounds like a malcontent who has forgotten how to smile throughout and even when he doesn't sound so annoyingly dour, the truths he speaks are depressing at best. Yet, overall it's a pretty damn good album. Not great, although some of the songs are, but pretty damn good. I recommend it, but with more caveats than I think I have ever given a record before. Maybe that split decision is ultimately a testament to "The Suburbs", since most truly great pieces of art have not been without derision and praise in equal measure, and there is plenty of praise and hyperbole out there surrounding this album to offset my derision here.

Wheeler had two separate reactions to "The Suburbs":

1. "Why does he have to be so serious? I know life sucks, I realize that every day, I don't need to listen to music to remind me of it! I wanna hear sunny songs about the beach and cats and smoking weed" (referring, of course, to Best Coast).

a few days later...

2. "You know despite everything I said before, I think I am going to end up liking this album."

"The Suburbs" fan video that is really rather good


"Rococo" live


"Suburban War"