It may have taken six years, but Arcade Fire have delivered a cracking new album that some critics are hailing as the defining rock album of 2010
Yes, it’s true — Arcade Fire have recorded a monumentous new album that is truly something to hear and behold.
On their third album in six years, The Suburbs (Universal), Win Butler and his wife, Régine Chassagne, actually sound as though they are having fun. As an added bonus you can even dance to it, which is not something you could have said about its emotionally overwrought predecessor, Neon Bible, which had frontman Butler sounding as though he was carrying the world on his shoulders.
Whether it was death, or religion, or “the man” that was getting Butler down, he has always come across as an earnest young man who was not afraid to make grand statements through his songs, which resulted in his band being compared to rock’s big names — the likes of U2, REM, Talking Heads and Radiohead.
But claims by the BBC that The Suburbs is an album so great it trumps Radiohead’s OK Computer may be a little premature.
I remember that in 1997, the year that OK Computer was released, the Verve’s completely overrated Urban Hymns was lauded by the critics and walked away with the Brit Award for the album of the year.
Thirteen years later, when music critics discuss the albums that defined the 1990s, OK Computer is at the top of the pile, alongside Nirvana’s Nevermind, and hardly anyone talks about Urban Hymns, besides Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft — and that’s because it was the last time anyone paid him any attention.
As they say, hindsight has 20-20 vision, but proclaiming The Suburbs as an album that will define the year 2010 and the decade ahead is an unnecessary distraction, especially considering that the album appears to suggest that the band have finally broken free from the weight of expectation that followed their 2004 debut album, Funeral.
Its 2007 follow-up, Neon Bible, on first impression seemed to pick up where Funeral had left off. It was heralded as another masterpiece by most critics when in reality it was simply a fine rock record with a few great songs.
But hindsight has shown that Neon Bible just didn’t quite stack up against the grandiose Funeral. Butler often came across as an overbearingly preachy and rather paranoid songwriter obsessed with the evils of organised religion, the government and environmental degradation.
The sea change that has occurred in Arcade Fire’s world in the three years between Neon Bible and The Suburbs seems to suggest that the band have finally left behind the weight of expectation and reconnected with the spirit that made them start making music in the first place.
The change is most noticeable in Butler’s lyrics, in which he seems to have learned a lesson or two from his recent past. “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 difference between The Suburbs and Neon Bible is like night and day. Whereas Neon Bible was an album that dealt with the present and all its problems, The Suburbs is a nostalgic, sepia-toned look back at Butler’s youth in the suburban sprawl of Houston, Texas.
Using photographs and old love letters as inspiration, Butler and Chassagne have written an album that feels both nostalgic and current.
Depeche Mode synth riffs and New Order-styled bass lines have been added to their arsenal of art-rock weapons, although the crunching guitar and orchestration are ever-present, too.
But where Arcade Fire used to layer their songs to within an inch of their lives, The Suburbs presents numerous examples of the band allowing the songs to breathe through looser arrangements, which shows off the fact that they write killer tunes.
Songs such as the gorgeous Modern Man recall the golden mid-1970s era of Fleetwood Mac with their sheer pop precision.
Butler appears to be talking to the kids and for the kids throughout the album, either through reminiscing about the soul-destroying nature of the United States’s middle-class suburbs or his own concerns of navigating the suburbs as an adult and as a potential future parent.
He even took some time out to write a punk tune, Month of May, which comes off sounding like the Ramones meets Bruce Springsteen and functions as a put-down to the critics and the hipster kids.
All in all, The Suburbs is a rather long album, a double in the tradition of the Clash’s London Calling, Bruce Springsteen’s The River and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk. It is a testament to the quality of the songwriting that 65 minutes of music can pass by and the only thought that springs to mind is: I want to hear that again.
There is the Blondie-esque electro (Sprawl II : Mountains Beyond Mountains), Hunky Dory-era Bowie (The Suburbs), sugary-sweet Brian Wilsonesque rock (Wasted Hours) and powerful chamber-pop (Empty Room).
So, yes, The Suburbs is a delight of an album and in popular culture it probably deserves to be talked about in the same breath as breakthrough albums such as U2’s Achtung Baby, Radiohead’s OK Computer and REM’s Automatic for the People. Whether it proves to be as influential remains to be seen.
Regardless of where Arcade Fire sits in the pecking order that is rock ‘n roll family tree, The Suburbs shows that they are without a doubt one of the finest rock groups in 2010.
The Suburbs hit shelves in South Africa on August 6