REVIEW : ARCADE FIRE - THE SUBURBS

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Genre : Baroque Pop/Art-Rock/Post Punk/Classic Rock Revival/80s Rock Revival/Punk/Electronic

Year : 2010

Label : Merge Records

Arcade Fire is a band that hardly needs any introduction. Becoming one of the biggest success stories of 2004 with the release of the scintillating album ‘Funeral’ that propelled them to mainstream stardom and helped cross sales of their record label Merge Records’ highest grosser – Neutral Milk Hotel’s revered classic ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’, it rattled label bosses off their seats everywhere, because, their sudden popularity devoid of any exposure through radio or TV befuddled most of them; it is now known that the collective force of bloggers had overpowered the already creatively crippled entertainment industry; besides the album was too good to be given a miss by anybody. In 2007 records were shattered again as their second effort debuted at #2 on Billboard Charts (which obviously pissed a lot of hipster kids considering that the same kids who could be appreciating acts like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera were now buying their beloved indie band’s new album ‘Neon Bible’). The exponential rise of the band surely must have shaken them out of the daily grind they were used to (they graced the cover of the Canadian edition of Time Magazine in 2005), but, the greatness that they showed musically also extended into reality as they maintained their down to earth persona, were not swayed by their newly acquired celebrityhood and eschewed from starry airs (remember the response to Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips’ innuendos with aplomb?) and showed that they were aware genial suburban kids at heart (which was crystal clear from their decision to stay indie and their consequent charity work – their appearance on the AIDS benefit compilation ‘Dark Was The Night’ and their donation of all proceeds to Partners In Health from 250 signed copies worth 250$ each of the deluxe edition of the Miroir Noir DVD being some of them). It is apparent that they wear their hearts on their sleeve and associate themselves with issues that are akin to and perturb human existence; yes, they play with fire and love it too. After their quietus ‘Funeral’ and the extended worldly elegy of ‘Neon Bible’ it was time for the band to visit the place where they started it all – ‘The Suburbs’.

In a recent interview Win Butler stated, “A lot of my heroes from Bob Dylan to Joe Strummer were suburban kids who had pretended that they were train-hoppers their whole lives. Talking about an experience and not make believe (is what we want to do on the record).” Though they highlight and lament the deplorable, interpolating and cringe worthy social aesthetics of the suburban life with realism, they do so like established auteurs – on a gargantuan scale at arena-rock’s bombastic levels; it’s like listening to a Hans Zimmerman perspective of a Christopher Nolan movie. The grandiose, theatrical, svelte and sweeping string arrangements (Half Light I, Empty Room), the sonorous mettlesome choruses (Rococo), the commoved chiming plangent piano notes (The Suburbs, We Used To Wait), the passionate, perspicacious and vivid storytelling (all the tracks) and the spirited drumming and guitar riffing (Empty Room, City With No children) with varying meters (Suburban Wars, We Used To Wait) do much to overwhelm the ears and present and aggrandize the very cinematic, gilded and verbose perspective of the band’s struggles of coping with life and coming to terms with it in this transitory period of moving from a small town near Nevada to their purported city of dreams (the cover art depicts this too – it’s a image of a car in front of a projected picture of a suburban landscape on a screen; as if this were a still of us watching a movie at the drive-in). One can envision the palpable drama that unfolds with each track as if the band were on a battlefield dodging the volley of bullets and missiles but still singing verses of survival, praise, pride and glory a la ‘Saving Private Ryan’ filmed by a serious Art Brut. Encompassing 16 songs that last for about an hour and five minutes this one is no short film; but, the tortuous drama/tension infused tracks with enough hooks and clean craftsmanship keep the interest pursued till the end and the bitter-sweet after taste lingering for a very long time; none of the tracks are a saddle-sore and that is what makes this melancholic ride extremely pleasurable.

This epic film would have been another pot-boiler, but, besides the aforementioned calibres the band ensures that they don’t mince words, that aptly paint/document the current landscape with the immaculate instrumentation, regardless of the blowbacks. The curtain raiser ‘The Suburbs’ sets the tone for the record; The Beatles-esque piano rocker gropes in the dark as the pensive but snappy piano and guitar notes are layered by disconcerted strings and buried guitar drones that reflect on Win Butler’s disappointments and his intention of running away from it all, “In the suburbs I/I long to drive/And you told me I’ll never survive/Grab your mother’s keys we’re leaving”, his surprise, “Sometimes I can’t believe it/I’m moving past the feeling/Into the night” over his inert and stone-hearted behaviour, “By the time the first bomb’s fell we were already bored”, and the fall and alteration of the neighbourhood that reminded him of his childhood, “All the houses they built in 70s finally fall” and his derision for his inability to stay with his future child for long and the familial strains or the fear of it, “I want a daughter while I’m still young/I want hold her hand/I want to show her the beauty before the damage is done”.

Taking a jab at the leeches who suck their blood to make a few bucks and making a point that he is not ready/struggling to bow down to them he animadverts, “Now you're knocking at my door/Saying please come out against the night/But I would rather be alone/Than pretend I feel alright/If the businessmen drink my blood/Like the kids in art school said they would/Then I guess I'll just begin again/You say can we still be friends” in the second track ‘Ready To Start’. The band has audibly stepped up the pace as the track sounds like Interpol singing a rendition of The Smith’s ‘This Charming Man’; trudging thrumming guitars mixing with the crashing cymbals; but, they slow down the tempo and arouse the track again over a shrill spiralling synth arpeggio. ‘Modern Man’ an ostensibly relevant track questions the modernity and tries to convince that modernity is just relativistic; just when you think you have won the rat race, another rat points out that he had won it eons ago and your celebration is worthless, “In my dream I was almost there/And you pulled me aside and said you're going nowhere/They say we are the chosen few/But we're wasted/And that's why we're still waiting/On a number from the modern man/Maybe when you're older you will understand/Why you don't feel right/Why you can't sleep at night now”. The picky 9/8 beat smoothly pervades the David Bowie-esque new wave track. ‘Rococo’, very ornately embellished, like the title suggests, with the narcotic modulated string arrangements, protracted guitar feedback that ultimately fades in the end and Win’s falsettos lays the barbs for the hipster kids when it mocks them in ways they will remember forever and that would piss them off again, “Let's go downtown and talk to the modern kids/They will eat right out of your hand/Using great big words that they don't understand/They build it up just to burn it back down/The wind is blowing all the ashes around/Oh my dear God what is that horrible song?/They seem wild but they are so tame/They're moving towards you with their colours all the same/They want to own you but they don't know what game they're playing”. Another beautiful baroque track ‘Empty Room’ with charging violin trills, very Vanessa Mae-esque, fills the void for a balls-out punk song as Régine Chassagne casts a spell with her vocals along with Win Butler in this blistering track about loneliness; it also has some French thrown in the end.

Upping the preachy quotient of the album, ‘City With No Children’ which sounds like Radiohead’s ‘There There’ with the ricocheting guitar riffs and the echoing vocals has a contrasting handclaps filled cheery vibe; it derides an ex-lover by drawing comparisons with heartless millionaires, but, later Win questions his own ideals by raising doubts about himself turning into them, “You never trust a millionaire/Quoting the sermon on the mount/I used to think I was not like them/But I'm beginning to have my doubts/My doubts about it”. ‘Half Light I’ with the glimmering and buzzing guitar notes and a flowering string build up and marching drum beats exalts us to open our minds and overstays the fact that we are only hearing ourselves, we need to go out and meet new people; evident from these wise words, “Our heads are just houses/Without enough windows/They say you hear human voices/But they only echo”. ‘Half Light II’ with reverb filled and drone/feedback filled angry guitar riffs, a 4/4 chugging house bassline and old-worldly string samples touches upon various points, with heart touching sadness, of ablution of sins, crashing markets and god but in the end longingly wishes that the suburbs would have been a better place now, “Though we knew this day would come/Still it took us by surprise/In this town where I was born/I now see through a dead man's eyes/ One day they will see it's long gone”.

Building upon this present feeling of the distasteful/diseased/damaged suburbia due to the changing demographics with nostalgia ‘Suburban Wars’ flickers with the warm jangly alternating minor and major chords and reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Sound Of Silence’; it stands out with those soft husky demure vocals and bubbling piano section but shape shifts when the tempo is increased, guitar drones introduced with thumping drum fills, cymbals exhilarated with the powerful string section and the skyrocketing chorus’ vocals conjoining it to create an enchanting crescendo; a truly stellar track this. It pities the commercial values that plague the suburbs and the hollow meaning of friendship nowadays, it says, “This town's so strange they built it to change/And while we sleep we know the streets get rearranged/My old friends, we were so different then/Before your war against the suburbs began”. ‘Month Of May’ suddenly explodes into violent winds of reverberating guitars and punk rock/fist pumping urgency and ends its destruction in darker sounding chords/drones that raze down the ambiance of the track and spews venom at the unforgiving/unyielding kids by declaring, “Now the kids are all standing with their arms folded tight/Kids are all standing with their arms folded tight/Well, some things are pure and some things are right/But the kids are still standing with their arms folded tight/I said some things are pure, and some things are right/But the kids are still standing with their arms folded tight”.

To loosen up on the slaying tactics the band has undertaken up till now, the band takes time to relax as The Beatles-esque jaunty acoustic guitar notes filtered through the piano’s accompaniment and the backing vocal’s ‘la-la-la..’ permeates the breezy environs of ‘Wasted Hours’ but still manages to conjure a call for freedom, “Some cities make you lose your head/In this suburb stretched out thin and dead/What was that line you said?/Wishing you were anywhere but here/You watched the life you're living disappear/And now I see, we're still kids in the buses longing to be free”. ‘Deep Blue’ that continues to inhabit this feeling with similar hooks harps on the same point put forth before of the collapsing suburb, “We watched the end of the century/Compressed on a tiny screen/A dead star collapsing and we could see/Something was ending /Are you through pretending? /We saw the signs in the suburbs”.

‘We Used To Wait’ with a pulsating piano line, a rumbling synthline and guitar plinks is elevated to the anthemic proportions of ‘Rebellion (Lies)’ and ‘No Cars Go’ accentuated by the lashing drum beats and the odd time signatures of the piano line, guitar riffs and the ingeminations “Oooo we used to wait”; it yearns and gathers dust with, “I'm gonna write a letter to my true love/I'm gonna sign my name/Like a patient on a table/I Wanna walk again/Gonna move through the pain/Now our lives are changing fast/Hope that something pure can last”. ‘Sprawl I (Flatland)’ a very compelling track sounding straight out of some theatre production is deep in pain and crackles with the vocals that signify the stagnation in the suburbs also tangible in the lyrics, “Let's take a drive through the sprawl/Through these towns they built to change/And then you said "The emotions are dead"/It's no wonder that you feel so estranged/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 felt like something is mine/Like I have something to give”. ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ surprises with the sudden stylistic change to, wait for it, disco! Very ABBA-esque or The Juan MacLean-esque, this electro rocker finds Régine Chassagne singing about the over commercialisation of the suburbs in the form of big shopping malls dotting the suburban skyline over a danceable and squishy snythline, “Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small/Then we can never get away from the sprawl/Living in the sprawl/Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains/And there’s no end in sight/I need the darkness/Someone please cut the lights”. ‘The Suburbs (continued)’ rolling out like the end credits of the movie is a slow duet between Win Butler and his spouse with the string section brazenly ending the new chapter in the life of this awesomely gifted band.

Well, after the end credits the only thing this album deserves is a standing ovation. The band looks at the subject with all possible camera angles and interesting plots and pushes forward their pertinent issues of urban decadence by presenting a pre-apocalyptic picture that might one day consume mostly everyone and implodes with the greed and blindfolded financially inspired favouritism. Before one is eaten up by the jaded chimera, the band does an excellent job to warn us and behold us of the impending danger by stylistically exploring various genres of music. This record is obviously a potential record of the year and is a highly recommended and a delectable rock record indeed.

Rating : 9.5/10

http://www.arcadefire.com/

http://www.myspace.com/arcadefireofficial

http://www.last.fm/music/Arcade+Fire

http://www.mergerecords.com/artists/arcade