Bemoaning suburb-induced disenchantment is hardly new territory: the routine monotony, the hopelessness, the lover who makes the boredom bearable. Despite treading on such worn ground, the sheer grandiosity of Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs is enough to shed new light on an overdone theme.
A foreboding tension builds throughout the album, starting on “The Suburbs,” a song underscored by the keys of a ghost town player piano. The song’s lyrics are the most poignant of the whole album, despite being the scene-setting number. The frivolousness of suburbia is captured beautifully when front man Win Butler opines:
When all of the walls that they built in the ’70s finally fall, and when all of the houses they built in the ’70s finally fall, meant nothing at all. Meant nothing at all, it meant nothing.
In typical Arcade Fire style, bleakness is counterbalanced by the group’s signature lush layering of sounds and Butler’s vocal bravado. The instrumentals here aren’t varied, but they provide a motif that keeps the album cohesive and focused.
The Suburbs falters a bit in the middle: A lack of urgency abounds, along with a failure to give importance to the lyrics. It is an interesting choice that “Rococo,” a track that seems to be attacking hipster mentality, does so by evoking the image of Rococo, a 18th century French art style specializing in the ornate on elaborate scale. While it’s a fun little comparison to kick around in your head, the song itself doesn’t come close to matching its metaphoric ambition.
The album does pick up near the end, with a good old-fashioned rocker (“Month of May”) and the blissfully upbeat electro-pop of “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” The album’s sign-off, “The Suburbs (Continued),” is pitch-perfect as it pointedly proclaims:
If I could have it back. All the time that we wasted. I’d only waste it again. If I could have it back. You know I’d love to waste it again. Waste it again, and again, and again…
This ties in with best emotional tug The Suburbs provides is via the simple brilliance of the refrain that both begins and bookends the album:
Sometimes I can’t believe it. I’m moving past the feeling again.
The beauty of the turn of phrase is that it has a completely different meaning from when it’s heard at the start and at the end of The Suburbs. On first pass, it sounds like a cry for help, as if searching for anyway to escape this world which Butler “can’t believe.” However, by the time all the heartache and woe have been explored, it seems like a last gasping breath trying to recapture the feeling of the suburbs. He can’t believe time is making him move past his lost love.
As they’ve done twice before, Arcade Fire again proves why they reign over the kingdom of blissful desolation.
Review Score: 8.5
*Expanded from a review originally published in The Pacific Northwest Inlander*
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Great review! I agree, they do have some very powerful lyrics. I just wrote my own review of the The Suburbs and I’m looking for feedback if you’re interested. I love the album. I think it’s going to be one of my all-time favourites.
http://ashest.wordpress.com/2010/09/16/new-music-the-suburbs-by-arcade-fire/
Peace,
Ashest