Arcade Fire
July 30, 2010The Suburbs
The notion of a third chapter in the Arcade Fire oeuvre hasn’t sat well for some. The Montreal collective’s 2004 debut Funeral and 2007 follow-up Neon Bible were so celebrated that to many, third album The Suburbs would be inevitably disappointing. Luckily, from the jangling piano, subtly building orchestration, and haze-drenched volume of the opener, this 16-sketch epic defies the nay-sayers.
Indeed, The Suburbs is a record brimming with swathes of sonic, melodic and lyrical detail. Win Butler and co. don’t lack artist bombast. But this album finds its orientation in tempering and balancing potentially divergent strands, as in the booming, baroque projection of ideas.There are fine examples. The maximalist orchestrations of Rococo and the flurrying strings of duet Empty Room rub shoulders with the funereal phrases and shimmering drones of Half Light I and the odd acoustic strumming patterns of Suburban War.
Elsewhere, the elegiac Sprawl I (Flatland) gives way to the pulsing, Kate Bush-esque electronic hook of Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Lyrically, too, The Suburbs walks something of a tightrope between opposing ideas. Where Funeral mourned the passing of youth, and Neon Bible recoiled in shock at a world gone mad, The Suburbs sketches a backdrop of place, resonance and memory. Its tales – of the vast and the intimate, of proximity and distance – create a sense that wherever you go, you’ll always be anchored to your past. By Dan Rule
Spunk/EMI
