Arcade Fire
‘The Suburbs’
(Sonovox)

Arcade Fire must be used to blowing their contemporaries clean out of the water by now. What’s this Win, Regine and co? Another masterpiece? Oh, alright then. The Montreal-based seven-piece managed to conjur up indie rock classics with both ‘Funeral’ and ‘Neon Bible’, and now it’s the turn of ‘The Suburbs’ to leave listeners slack-jawed in awe. But while we’ve become accustomed to Arcade Fire consistently coming up with the goods, we’re certainly not used to them doing it like this. As, for their third effort, the band showcase a cleaner and more varied sound; understated, reflective, folky, electronic in places and far from the youthful raucousness of their debut and its intense follow-up. Inspired by an email from an old friend Win Butler grew up with in the suburbs of Houston, Texas and subsequent visits to the various much changed landscapes his bandmates used to call home, it’s an album packed full of references to childhood memories, leaving and loss, new towns, new malls, change and a longing for purity – and its music sighs with sadness for days gone by. You can lose yourself entirely in attempting to unpick ‘The Suburbs’’ sixteen tracks and, as a result, it’s a lot to take in; each eloquent offering interlinked with certain musical fragments and recurring phrases. But, incredible complexity aside, it’s really rather easy on the ears, and the way the Montreal act offset this with a pervading sense of lyrical unease means huge questions and reflections leave even more of an impression. They’re not screaming that there is “something wrong” on ‘Deep Blue’, for example, they are whispering it, which is even more terrifying. And while apocalypse and urban unrest is nothing new for Arcade Fire, never before have they handled it with music of such breadth. The title track opens jauntily but darkness soon creeps in as ‘Ready To Start’ talks of businessmen that drink blood, with ragged art rock riffs finally puncturing the tension on ‘Modern Man’ – “Like a record skipping/I’m a modern man,” sings Butler, “Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand/Why you can’t sleep at night/Something don’t feel right”. ‘Rococo’ is another unsettling epic, while ‘Half Light 1’ is a shimmering orchestral number – almost classical when the cellos plough in – and the Regine Chassagne-led ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ is positively synth-ridden and sedately disco-like. ‘The Suburbs’ is an astonishing achievement for Arcade Fire; it boasts exquisite sophisticated songwriting that subtly taps into a sense of modern existential anxiety and elevates its makers yet again into a different musical league entirely.

Camilla Pia