The Suburbs by Arcade Fire
LABEL: Merge Records

The most important thing to understand about The Suburbs is that it’s Arcade Fire’s least great album. Key to that understanding, however, is this equally-important realization: it’s almost all our fault. The relative pluses and minuses of The Suburbs don’t exist in a vacuum; they hinge on our collective expectations, on what listeners think an Arcade Fire album can and should be. This is irresponsible of us, but it’s the way these things work.

“The suburbs, it seems, are two parts escape
and one part prison.”

But no self-respecting music critic nor die-hard Arcade Fire fan is going to venture as far as to say The Suburbs is a bad album. In fact, it’s quite good. Its eponymous opener is bright and invigorating and instantly catchy. “We Used to Wait” is heavy and pulsing, sonically similar to much of Neon Bible. It’s obvious almost instantly the increased production work the band has poured into their latest work. The album is loud and full, layered and clear. Lyrically, Arcade Fire is as adept as ever, somehow making something as banal as suburban living seem far more dreadful and insidious.

The Suburbs is Arcade Fire’s letter to nostalgic housewives, ensnared businessmen, and apprehensive twenty-somethings. It’s not, exactly, advice that the band offers—instead, notes and snippets on thoughts and fears. There is a distinct sense of apocalyptic dread pervading this album and its narrators’ concisuousness. "Half Light II" offers recollections of markets crashing and personal loss. "The Sprawl II," the album’s best, is a shining Blondie-tinged, synth-soaked gem—and yet even it fails to overcome the album’s suburban dread. Instead its narrator laments how suburban living is smothering her creativity. The suburbs, it seems, are two parts escape and one part prison. (If you really want to get this sense, let the final track loop directly into the first. Then you’ll really see.)

“But this is Arcade Fire at its most accessible, great when its good, and disappointing when it isn’t.”

Thematic prowess aside, however, The Suburbs, on the whole, doesn’t meet the expectations set by their previous two outputs. Gone are the immense, urgent anthems of Funeral and the political commentary of Neon Bible. Instead, The Suburbs offers something uncharacteristically dull and safe—and it is in this sense that the album begins to resemble the lifestyle it underhandedly criticizes. The Suburbs feels tame and domestic, boring in the most neutral sense, and sporadically exciting. It also seems at times irresponsibly large. With its hour-long play time, The Suburbs never ends when it should, and seems, not infrequently, to slouch slowly and tediously forward. This either makes Arcade Fire moderately lazy or tremendously smart.

But none of it is bad. It’s just not great, or perhaps just not Arcade Fire great. If Arcade Fire is guilty of anything, it’s creating a middling, mediocre album that rarely rises above satisfactory. Which really just means that it isn’t likely to be the first album you listen to when you want to hear an Arcade Fire album. (That honor still goes to Funeral). But this is Arcade Fire at its most accessible, great when its good, and disappointing when it isn’t. Longtime fans may wring their hands, but this is Arcade Fire for a whole new audience—everyone.


REVIEWED BY RICARDO BILTON
RICARDO’S FAVE TRACKS: “The Suburbs” • “Modern Man” • “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”