I suspect that this will be a divisive record, and it’s easy to see why. The Suburbs seizes occasionally, like an epileptic, recalling the jarring, fresh sensibility of the Arcade Fire’s debut, Funeral. And right now, book it: “Sprawl II” is the second-best song of the year. The title track and “City With No Children” each proceed with a stylish shuffle. Songs like “Empty Room” and “Half Light II” rush out as towering, four-on-the-floor vehicles for propulsion. They offer what Arcade Fire is good at: melding the classy, high-register foliage of strings to slick, crashing guitars. You kind of expect frontman Win Butler to proffer one of his silly, winsome yelps. But Win doesn’t yelp anymore. Win doesn’t yelp anymore because Win is epically bummered. You see, after leaving his Québécois paradise to tour America, Win witnessed the great tragedy that threatens constantly the very edifice that makes us human in the most transcendent sense: Urban Sprawl.
It’s such a common criticism that it’s practically no criticism at all. I mean, you don’t need signs posted everywhere telling you not to rush out in front of traffic. Nonetheless, it is more true for The Suburbs than for many recent works: There is an album in here, somewhere. But what got pressed onto vinyl/laser etched onto compact disk/ encoded into mp3 is emphatically not an album. There are heavy makeout sessions, limbs striking walls and breathing like gasping, that are more of an album than The Suburbs. Clattering pans and chefs pratfalling on spilled olive oil may sound more like an album than The Suburbs. No, The Suburbs sounds like the lifeless reflections of a chastised middle schooler set to a funereal caricature of this band I heard about a few years ago. They released a great debut called Funeral. It’s not an album so much as a boring lecture set to forgettable background music. It sounds like getting your pant leg stuck in the bike chain and you dump and have to go home to your mom yelling at you about grass stains. It sounds like an Elk’s Club essay about the topic Modernity. There’s something alive in it, but it’s buried deep.
This third Arcade Fire record weighs in at a long 16 songs, spanning an interminable 65 minutes. There are songs on the record, but they don’t sound like songs. If a Las Vegas bookie offered me an over/under of 20% for the percent of the words coming out of Win Butler’s mouth that are “suburb(s),” “cars,” “sprawl,” and synonyms for darkness, I would take the over. The album is maniacally focused on disliking the suburbs, discovering that the world is a shopping mall, and feeling bad about either being from the suburbs or having to drive around the suburbs once you’ve gotten out of the suburbs. From a lyrical perspective, I don’t think I have ever heard such a poor album from such a talented band. A verse from “Modern Man” goes,
Oh I had a dream I was dreaming
And I feel like I’m losing the feeling
Makes me feel like
Like something don’t feel right
I erase the number of the modern man
Want to break the mirror of the modern man
Makes me feel like
Makes me feel like
which, I think we can all agree, is a terrible verse. “I had a dream I was dreaming” is an unacceptably hamfisted way to convey any sort of feeling (or feeling of a feeling), even if it is profound and incisive feeling. And this feeling doesn’t feel, you know, like a profound feeling. Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that. There are some very simple lyrics that wonderfully convey commonplace feelings. That effect is arguably what pop music is primarily about. The Suburbs doesn’t do this. The album is like a nagging, whinging expression of modern man’s powerlessness over getting papercuts. Its effect and sentiment is actually what the phrase “banality of evil” should have been meant to mean. The sophistication with which Butler tackles problems is so childish and effete that it seems like it could actually be a really clever ‘meta’ joke. It’s like a 65 minute version of Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” if only she actually knew what “irony” meant and she was just fucking with us the whole time. Because that would have been ironic. But I really don’t think Butler is self-aware enough to know that neither his subject matter or the form of his denunciations are about as sophisticated as a baby wearing a lab coat and a gray wig, sitting in front of a chalkboard that says E = mc^2.
I mean, unemployment is destroying America. People are losing their homes. And Win Butler has released an album shitting all over the idea of “punching a clock” and having a nice home. The whole shitty mess is so privileged that, I mean maybe Butler should have his artist card revoked for a while. There’s a climactic moment in “The Sprawl” where, over dramatically buzzing strings, Butler complains about curfew: “Cops showing their lights / On the reflectors of our bikes / Said, ‘Do you kids know what time it is?’ / ‘Well sir, it’s the first time I’ve felt like something is mine’.” Life is really hard, I know. Getting hassled by the suburban cops to get off the well-maintained suburban street and ride your suburban bike back to your suburban house where your suburban family has prepared a suburban dinner for you to suburbanly eat before you study for your suburban algebra test and go to suburban bed is emphatically not how life is hard. In “Wasted Hours” Butler sings, “We’re just kids in buses longing to be free,” and that line seems true. His problems are of such an unsophisticated, boring, and kind of offensively bland nature that a lot of The Suburbs sounds like some kids on a school bus doodling in their notebooks, singing, and making a ruckus until their bus is in position to let them off to school. To the sixth grade. In which they’re eleven years old. The Suburbs is about eleven-year-old problems. I mean, come on. Grow up.
It’s nice to end on a high note. This is the end of the review, so I will say again that “Sprawl II” is a really great song. It recalls Abba in pleasing ways, and for some reason the banal lyrics sound better when Régine Chassagne is singing them. It’s a mystery why Régine is only used for about a third of the songs. Practically all her contributions are fun and good. The rest of the album is, well, the opposite: tedious and bad.
[Purchase the Arcade Fire's The Suburbs (mp3) for $3.99 from Amazon. That's about what it's worth.]
Dead-on analysis. I was sort of shocked that P4K’s Ian Cohen didn’t hear the banal juvenility of the lyrics when he wrote his “Best New Music” review of the album. It’s a pretty unfortunate album that isn’t deserving half the critical praise it’s received thus far. But, yes, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” is a fabulous, unexpected track and will be getting repeated spins on my stereo this year.
I totally agree.
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I’ve given this album more than 10 listens and I think you and many others have actually misinterpreted a lot of the lyrics on here as Butler’s attempt at profound criticism of Suburban life when in fact it’s almost the exact opposite. In many ways, it’s a celebration of Suburban life. Here’s a quote from Butler himself talking about how many of his heroes (Dylan and Strummer) had to pretend they didn’t grow up privileged and how they were constantly pretending to be something they weren’t. Here’s the quote: “A lot of my heroes from Bob Dylan to Joe Strummer were suburban kids who had to pretend they were train-hoppers their whole lives. Talking about an experience and not make-believe [is what we're doing on 'The Suburbs'].”
I could understand the criticism of the Suburbs basically dealing with many of the same issues of childhood nostalgia/confusion/wonder that he and the rest of the members dealt with so aptly on Funeral but I don’t really see this as a bashing the Suburbs affair. Sure, there are moments of it but more than anything this feels like Butler and Chasigne deciding where they want to raise children (something many of us who first started listening to Arcade Fire in our early twenties might be wondering now too) and there’s a push-pull between the pros and cons of suburban versus city life. “City with No Children” specifically seems to be dealing with the notion that major urban centers don’t have a lot of children in them. You see kids in strollers and then they’re gone, their parents moved out to a more affordable location with more space and a yard. That song seems to be about the downsides of trying to live in a city. “Wasted Hours” seems to be a nostalgic look back on those long bus rides many of us used to take to leave our parents and find independence. “Suburban War” seems to be about that point in time in a teenager’s life where all of his or her friends are heading in different paths. The line, “The music divides us into tribes. You cut your hair so I cut mine” reminded me anyway of all the different phases we went through as kids and how some of our best friends weren’t on board with those phases, or joined different cliques (and subsequently changed their appearances). In fact, he follows that line up with, “You cut your hair, I never saw you again.” “Rococo” is said to be a tongue-in-cheek take on how suburban kids view urban kids all the while poking fun at the pretentiousness of today’s youth who have the ability to look up any band and mimic any style thanks to the internet. “Sprawl II” seems to be about Regine telling Win, “I know you remember the Suburbs fondly but fuck that. I was considered a freak back there. They didn’t like my singing. They just wanted me to be like everybody else. All I wanted to do was leave and seek out the city lights.” “We used to wait” sort of ties in with “Modern Man” in that they both deal with the downsides of modern society’s reliance on technology and perhaps the psychological effect growing up with constant A/V stimulation might have had on his generation and all that have come after it. “Modern Man” seems to be a lament about how men have allowed the same manipulative and self-destructive advertising that have plagued women for decades into our own heads now. We’re paranoid about our looks now and many men do carry around mirrors now. We’re becoming more insecure, manicured and paranoid about our own body images (penis enlargement banners, just for men hair products, Axe… all of these ads are trying to make us feel insecure about ourselves). This is absolutely an album, albeit a very intimate one dealing with personal issues rather than the global issues you seemed to come in hoping to hear. And on top of all that, I think the music on here is great, referencing everything from Neil Young, to New Order, to Spiritualized to Elliot Smith, to the Ramones, to Blondie… all the while sounding Arcade Fire. And because of these things… I think this record will age extremely well.
Just trying to figure out why my reply is still awaiting moderation. I took the time to offer a counterpoint to the main focus of the review and did so respectfully and thoroughly. I’m a big fan and vocal supporter of this site on many other forums and I’d like to think you guys don’t edit out any opinions that are differently than yours. Did I write too much? Should I edit down? I just want to keep the conversation going with people who take music as seriously as I do. I look forward to your reply.
Hey Randall. Sorry about that. I think you just got caught in the spam filter somehow. Plus, things have been a little crazy over at camp 10 Listens lately (thus the lack of posts). I love the takes you have on some of these songs. I’m gonna give the album another whirl and see if your viewpoint changes my mind– though not the mind of B. Mike, maybe.
No worries, Jeff. Long time reader (well, about as long term as something this new can be) but I hadn’t posted before so it seemed strange not to see it up for such a long time.
Anyway, I think the best lyrics on the entire album is this:
“So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I’m still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done
But if it’s too much to ask, it’s too much to ask
Then send me a son”
Ultimately, that’s where I think Win and Regine’s heads were at with this entire thing. Win just turned 30 and they’re probably thinking about family building stuff. Throughout most of the record there seems to be a pros/cons sort of thing going on about raising a family outside of a major city or in a major city. The pros involve a lot of nostalgia and a more peaceful way of life. The cons include lack of individuality, culture and more advertising brainwashing from megacorporations due to them overwhelming the small, independent businesses usually found in major urban centers.
This record is about that weird point in one’s life where they’re remembering their childhood while simultaneously planning for their own family’s future. It’s a terrifying point in one’s life because we start to realize that maybe our parents weren’t totally lame. Maybe they too had dreams and enjoyed partying but that they put that on hold to give us better childhoods. Which parts of your childhood are worth passing onto the next generation? How much of your parents are in you?
These themes might sound trivial but they’re deeply personal, timeless and universal. You combine that with heartfelt, sincere singing that aims more for your gut than the top of the charts and some beautiful arrangements and you have yourself a great record that you’ll be able to turn back to and listen to again in another 10 or even 20 years… Do you think you’ll be able to say the same thing about Sleigh Bells?
Cokemachineglow’s review of this record was shockingly in line with a lot of my interpretation which is kind of funny because they didn’t seem to like Neon Bible very much at all. If anybody out there is interested in hearing a more “scholarly” take on some of the things I’ve tried to discuss here you might want to head on over to there at some point in time and check it out.