Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (2010)
(Indie,Rock,Canada)
So, what’s the verdict? It’s good. It’s really good. Actually, you might say it’s great, but if you did, you wouldn’t be giving it a solid, concrete listen. Truth be told, it’s somewhere in that tender underbelly between great and good. The awkward moment where we really can’t tell if the music we’re listening to either affects us because we want it to, or if it’s genuinely hitting us hard. That leaves us in quite a predicament then, huh?
Okay, so what the hell are we talking about?
If you’re fucking clueless: Arcade Fire just finished a new album. It’s titled The Suburbs. It’s their longest yet (clocking in at just over an hour). It’s filled with personal, heartbreaking images that somehow seem quite accessible. It’s rough in some areas, it’s clean in others. It runs, it chugs, it breathes, it shrugs. It’s a low concept, high built vehicle that sells one idea: This isn’t the work of an indie band. No, if we’re to learn anything from the North American sensation’s third studio effort, it’s that they’re not only here to stay, they’re here to establish themselves as a permanent, essential chunk of your record collection. They want that space, to the right of the Allman Brothers and just a few inches away from The Beatles.
And why not? They deserve it. Some have argued this for years – and they’d be right; just revisit 2004’s Funeral and/or 2007’s vastly underrated (yes, underrated) Neon Bible – now they have few to convince. Because, if we’re to take The Suburbs into consideration, it’s pretty obvious now that the Arcade Fire not only seem vastly superior to their past colleagues, they seem to have exonerated them altogether. In other words, can you even think of a band from their class that comes close to rivaling them? Don’t answer that. Rhetorical question.-ReadMore/Consequenceofsound.net
2 years ago