We've all seen bands come out of the gate firing with an amazing debut album and then fade away into obscurity. We've all seen "great bands" turn into "average bands" after a couple of albums. This was my biggest fear for Arcade Fire. When Funeral came out it blew everybody away. It was filled with hits and allowed them to develop their own unique sound. Their follow up album Neon Bible, was good but not great. For me it was important that The Suburbs be a good album to avoid them going down the path of mediocrity.
It turns out that The Suburbs is actually a great album. It is a true concept album meant to be heard from start to finish. What really strikes me about this album is all of the subtleties. Arcade Fire do a great job of conveying all types of emotion throughout the album. It starts off with the title track "The Suburbs" which talks about broken dreams and the feeling of settling with what you have ("I want a daughter while I'm still young... But if it's too much too ask send me a son"). By the fourth track "Rococo", they really begin to hit their stride and you begin to realize this is something special. The album continues to build in momentum leading up to "Sprawl" and "Sprawl II". While the first "Sprawl" is slow paced eerie and dark, the second is upbeat, fast paced, and has Regine singing sad lyrics in an almost celebratory way ("Sometimes I wonder if the world is so small/That we will never get away from the sprawl" "They heard me singing and they told me to stop/Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock"). The album finally closes with "The Suburbs (continued)" which reprises the downer chorus from the first track "Sometimes I get believing/I'm moving past the feeling." After you play the whole thing through, you realize you just experienced a musical journey.
In conclusion The Suburbs is pretty fantastic. It has everything that you love about Arcade Fire, and allows them to add to their own sound. It's a concept album that warps you into it's atmosphere. The Suburbs should go down with the likes of OK Computer and (What's the story) Morning Glory? Not in sound, but in how the impact of the album pushed these bands to elite status.
