1) The Suburbs; 2) Ready to Start; 3) Modern Man; 4) Rococo; 5) Empty Room; 6) City With No Children; 7) Half Light I; 8) Half Light II (No Celebration); 9) Suburban War; 10) Month of May; 11) Wasted Hours; 12) Deep Blue; 13) We Used to Wait; 14) Sprawl I (Flatlands); 15) Sprawl II (Mountains Upon Mountains); 16) The Suburbs (Continued)
You might think it's back to basics but really, it's a suburban sprawl: cosey and homely perhaps, but sneakily taking over new territories.
The Suburbs is a palate cleanser for Arcade Fire. Neon Bible took their crescendo-driven songwriting to its absolute limit, and I loved every orchestrally exploding, choir-drowned, organ-bellowing second of it. But, there is a limit to just how big you can get and after that you either start repeating your tricks or you can choose to move to a different aisle. It wasn't just bigger in sound but also in its message, Win Butler shifting his sights from the snow-covered neighbourhoods of Funeral to doom-mongering over the entire world. A few years later and those sentiments had moved to self-doubt, or as The Suburbs at one point puts it so aptly: "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”.
The Suburbs is a return to smaller stakes, to some extent. It's still very much an Arcade Fire record with all the epic moments that come with that name attached, but in the context of this particular group it's scaled down, stripping away a lot of the extra bells and whistles that they themselves had introduced to the 00s indie rock scene. It's more down to earth and firmly fixed in the personal scale of its titular nostalgic suburbs - Butler shrinks the record’s aim into the microcosm of the neighbourhoods
and faded teenage memories, personal stories and introspection from when the rest of the world was just a blurry image in the horizon. Alongside that, the music pulls back as well: the production is more straightforward, even compared to Funeral, and the album frequently takes its time enjoying the stillness rather than ramping up to the finale, as evidenced by numerous two-parter songs with extended introductionary sequences or outros. The Suburbs still layered in multitudes - the band is a septet of multi-instrumentalists after all - but its approach is, in lack of a better word, less show-offy about the wide range of talent the band hold.
The greatest trick The Suburbs pulls is hiding its own expansiveness underneath a back-to-basics exterior: it's an experimental, transitional record in disguise. Crowd-inspiring anthems were Arcade Fire's signature move, but third time doing them in the same way and you could start wearing the concept thin - but at the same time, the band weren't seemingly sure where exactly to steer their ship either. Thus, Arcade Fire aren’t reinventing themselves here and the stylistic concepts of the first two records are running throughout The Suburbs - “Rococo” carries the maximalism of Neon Bible and the close-to-heart warmth of e.g. “The Suburbs” and “Modern Man” descend from the homegrown intimacy of Funeral. Many of the album's greatest moments have their feet stuck firmly in the band's own musical history, particularly with the hazy melancholy of its marching title track and the stunning "Suburban War" which is one of the band's most gorgeously arranged pieces with most arresting melodies - both of which still sound like familiar Arcade Fire by this stage. But those recognisable siybds are are intermittently scattered in-between the rest of the sprawling 16-track record, serving as the center for the ideas board the rest of the album represents and used as springboards to new areas. It's why it's not quite accurate to call The Suburbs simply an Arcade Fire record that got toned down, because a good two thirds of the record sees the band pulling in new ideas or executing old ones in different ways.
How that manifests most notably is in just how dynamic The Suburbs sounds - or in other words, how much it rocks. Arcade Fire have never exactly been close to the 'rock' part of 'indie rock', but for The Suburbs they channel their characteristic zeal and arena-sized energy into giving their songs a right kick under the rear. There’s a world of difference between e.g. the stadium fist-pumper “Ready to Start”, the noisy punk brattiness of “Month of May” and the baroque shoegaze of “Empty Room”, but what they all share is the sheer show of force in their sound and in the playing. One of Arcade Fire’s greatest assets is their passionate intensity and throughout The Suburbs they use that to be loud, fervent and exhilirating. Many of its most deftly arranged, gorgeously performed songs lie in its less frantic corners, but it's that punchiness of its most electrically charged songs that really sticks out when you actually play the album - and even during the subtler moments, there's a liveliness and strength to the band's play that comes naturally when now-seasoned live veterans return to bashing things out together within the same small four walls. In Arcade Fire's context The Suburbs is an intimate record, but only in the sense that the sweat in the player's brows is palpable through the sheer power of their playing, as they bring the songs to life in what is for them a relatively low-stakes production environment.
It's why “Sprawl II (Mountains Upon Mountains)” works so well at the end of the album. The other stylistic undercurrent cutting across The Suburbs is that it features a couple of songs where synthesizers dominate the soundscape - which, if you're aware of the wider discography, is in retrospect a clear test run for the ideas that would start popping around the next set of records. The twilight rave of "Half Light II" (which marries beautifully to its more Suburbs-like first half) is an exciting jolt of surprise already, but "Sprawl II" gets
the fabled penultimate spot: the tracklist slot where Arcade Fire
always bring out their record-defining highlights. Compared to most of the earnestly self-serious The Suburbs, it’s a complete 180° - a perkily pop-flirting number lead by Reginé Chassagne, all bright synth leads, bubbling synth bass and a light-footed, shuffling rhythm eager to hit the dancefloor. Where Butler has been searching for meaning in
adolescent experiences and got lost on the path
between the suburbs and where he is now (and as an aside, this is probably Butler's peak as a lyricist and "Suburban War" in particular is sublime and nails down the record's entire concept beautifully), Chassagne brings the colour
back into the world. “Sprawl II” is a fantastic song, radiating with so much genuine warmth and fun - it's still caught in the anxiety of growing up
somewhere so small that you felt trapped, but it's bursting with defiance and pride about escaping into the wider world. It subtly shifts up from its quaint beginnings into a veritable giant and even still it sounds so lightweight it could practically fly off. As the de facto closer of the record (the reprise of
“The Suburbs” at the literal end is really just an outro), it not just brings the
album's various threads together, but it turns them into the proud
declaration of intent that the rest of the album shies away from - and it does it with a massive smile on its face. That contrast at the end works so very beautifully.
"Sprawl II" also draws a line on the ground as it starts pulling the curtains to a close: it's the most out-and-out diversion from what had been established as The Arcade Fire Sound, and after The Suburbs the band took it as their main inspiration to move away from that sound. Which makes The Suburbs somewhat of a pivotal record for the band because while on one hand it takes a step back towards a tone closer to their roots, it ultimately represents a desire to change, for the band to start shifting shape. Yet, its stylistic experiments are still done with an overall cohesion in mind as part of the Wider Concept of the record, and they're tucked in-between songs which basically sound just like more great Arcade Fire songs - so you might never even realise just how much it's started to move away from the expected. That's why it's not necessarily one of their more stand-out records, because it feels like a slight retread unless you really start paying attention to it - and it definitely could have shaved off a few songs and the "Wasted Hours" / "Deep Blue" couplet has always been the section that comes to my mind - and I for one certainly underestimated as such for a long time after its release. In retrospect The Suburbs' true nature becomes more clear though, both as a hint towards the future and final farewell to the past, and from a completely personal angle it took me a good many years after its release to realise just how good of a record it was and why. If it's possible for Arcade Fire to release a slowburner then this is it, but its thrills are many and various.
Rating: 8/10
Physical corner: The Suburbs was released with a whopping
nine different cover variants where the scenery in front of the car
differs; mine is the (appropriately) suburban neigborhood shot. I didn’t
choose this one specifically, it just happened to be the one in the
shop at the time. Gatefold packaging with a fold out lyrics sheet.
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