| The Suburbs  |  | Artist: Arcade Fire
Label: Merge Records
Category: Music
List Price: $15.98
Buy New: $8.99
as of 9/9/2010 09:55 CDT details
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New (40) Used (5) from $7.25
Seller: Focus_Books
Rating:  95 reviews
Sales Rank: 5
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 5.3 x 5 x 0.3
UPC: 673855038520
EAN: 0673855038520
ASIN: B003O85W3A
Release Date: August 3, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | The Suburbs | | • | Ready To Start | | • | Modern Man | | • | Rococo | | • | Empty Room | | • | City With No Children | | • | Half Light I | | • | Half Light II (No Celebration) | | • | Suburban War | | • | Month Of May | | • | Wasted Hours | | • | Deep Blue | | • | We Used To Wait | | • | Sprawl I (Flatland) | | • | Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) | | • | The Suburbs (Continued) |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Written, arranged, performed, and produced by the Arcade Fire and co-produced by Markus Dravs, The Suburbs was recorded around Montreal and New York over the past two years.
Album Description
Vinyl LP pressing. Highly anticipated 2010 release from the critically adored Alt-Rock outfit. Written, arranged, performed and produced by the Arcade Fire and co-produced by Markus Dravs, The Suburbs was recorded around Montreal and New York over the past two years.The Arcade Fire's 2004 debut Funeral featured strongly in Album of the Decade Polls around the world including NME, Pitchfork, Guardian, Mojo and Rolling Stone. Their 2007 follow-up Neon Bible, debuted number 2 in the U.S. Both records were nominated for Best Alternative Album Grammys.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 95
 Life after the Funeral August 3, 2010
Jeff Loudon (Nashville, TN)
135 out of 171 found this review helpful
Arcade Fire burst onto the scene in 2004 with their debut album, Funeral. Their grandiose indie anthems earned them glowing praise from critics and fans alike. With Win Butler leading on vocals and guitar, Arcade Fire's eclectic instrumentation and apparent influences, including David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead, and Neil Young, made them stand out from the countless indie bands getting their start at the same time.
Recording their second album in a church, Neon Bible utilized a pipe organ, full orchestra and military choir to expand their sound even further. Although the mood of Neon Bible was much darker than the soul cleansing shouts of hope that burst through the depression on the surface of Funeral, Arcade Fire proved they were much more than a one off talent. A packed tour schedule consumed the band's time until early 2008 when the members decided to take a break, playing a few free shows later in the year in support of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy, but ultimately staying out of the public eye.
Now, two years later, Arcade Fire is finally back with one of the most anticipated albums of 2010. Their third record opens with the title track, "The Suburbs," which finds Arcade Fire in significantly lighter spirits than their previous two records. The same band looking for an escape from the pains of life realized in their earlier years is now beginning to accept the conformity of suburbia with a new goal of providing their children with the best experiences life has to offer, safe from the agony they had to work through.
There is still, however, an internal conflict hidden within the band's acceptance of The Suburbs. On "Ready To Start," an energetic verse proclaiming "I would rather be wrong than live in the shadows of your song" shows the classic break-away mindset of Arcade Fire shining through while the following track, "Modern Man," brings the pace back down to the mid-tempo groove and finds Win Butler repeating "I'm a modern man" as if he's trying to convince the listener of something he doesn't quite believe himself yet. The musical mood swings continue as laid back tracks like "Rococo" and "Wasted Hours" are given "Empty Room" and "Month of May," two of the most animated tracks on the album, as neighbors. Although, on first listen, this pitting of tunes against each other may cause the album to seem sporadic, on further listens, the sheer genius of the track ordering and songwriting as a whole rings out.
The apex of the album occurs during "Suburban War." The realization of inevitable maturity begins to be accepted as Butler's earlier cry of "I would rather be wrong than live in the shadows of your song" becomes "I've been living in the shadows of your song." The truth comes out, denial becomes acceptance and the song's tempo doubles as the line "all my old friends, they don't know me now" is hauntingly repeated.
The Suburbs finds Arcade Fire taking a longing look at the naivety of their youth while looking forward to what the future holds. Where their first two albums leaned heavily on stand out singles like "Wake Up," "Rebellion," "Keep the Car Running," and "Intervention," The Suburbs is much more of a complete work meant to be taken in as a single, hour long journey between adolescence and adulthood. Longtime fans of Arcade Fire will always hold Funeral on a pedestal, untouchable by future releases, but just as children often grimace at being compared to their parents, The Suburbs is a masterpiece worthy of such an analogy.
Similar Artists: Talking Heads, Pixies
Track Suggestion: "Suburban War"
**ATTENTION OTHER REVIEWERS**
Just because you aren't on the first page is no reason to vote a review as "unhelpful."
Arcade Fire - The Suburbs August 3, 2010
Andrew Vice (Plano, TX)
44 out of 55 found this review helpful
Arcade Fire has been mining the emotional turmoil of adolescence since its debut in 2004, and though the cause of that turmoil has once again changed, the message is, as always, the same. I'm not one of those people that thinks that everything Arcade Fire has done has been peerless and flawless: I think Arcade Fire is a good band that makes good albums with a handful of truly brilliant songs, nothing more and nothing less. The Suburbs is, as some of the song titles would suggest, a sprawling work, and not without its flaws, but there is plenty of reward for those willing to stick it out for the 60+ minutes. Perhaps working too tightly on the theme of "the suburbs," the album has a tendency to be repetitive, which is not surprising given the album's length and the number of Part 1/Part 2 songs on the record. Though it suffers from some of the same problems like the Decemberists' bloated The Hazards of Love, namely strict adherence to a not entirely warranted theme, the Suburbs sets itself apart by having a number of truly excellent songs. Modern Man and Sprawl II are definitely among the best songs Arcade Fire have written, but having a propulsive drive that demands stomping in time with the beat and belting out the words. It should have been obvious all along that Arcade Fire was not going to top their (somewhat over-loved) debut, Funeral, but on the Suburbs, the band has stayed true to its sound and made the logical next step.
generation X grows up, declares war August 16, 2010
gonzobrarian
11 out of 13 found this review helpful
Confronting the ever-impending threat of death, Arcade Fire has never lacked angst or even outright anger in its music. "Funeral" is a very literal reaction by the band after experiencing the deaths of relatives while recording. "Neon Bible" apocalyptically outlined an emergent generation's fears of demise of their nation or greater society. With their latest release The Suburbs, the trend continues with an equally yet more localized destruction, this time focusing on crumbling pockets of isolated community. But rather than another version of accepting death, The Suburbs is more a declaration of war on dual fronts.
On the one hand, it is a not very subtle declaration against certain waning generational forces, namely the baby-boomer generation (as my wife BiancaNDM will strenuously assert, I must add). Songs like "City With No Children" describe the anger against millionaires rotting in their decaying private prisons, "Sprawl" visualizing endless mountains of illuminated shopping malls, where we are urged to "quit our pretentious things and just punch the clock", the insignificance of buildings built in the 70s that crumble without anyone caring, or worse, even noticing.
A double edged sword, the album is also a declaration of war on our internal forces. Generation X has now grown up, and has to face not only the excess of the boomers but perhaps the lack of our willingness to overcome the boredom of the suburbs and mature beyond ourselves. Indeed, in the title track, Win Butler sings of a desperation to avoid something worse than death, not only growing old but having a family as a "grown up". Furthermore, the songs touch upon a future unable to be prepared for: losing friends to adulthood, remembering the glory and perfection of our wasted time in youth, realizing it may have been better to remain a kid on a bus longing to be free than to be an adult and dealing with the all-encompassing sprawl. It has a definite `80s nostalgia but with a 21st century gut-wrenching epiphany of excess.
Musically, this is the tightest release yet by Arcade Fire. The vocals from Win Butler seem a little more constrained than Neon Bible, perhaps to rest his voice, but also to follow the psychological tension of the album. Regine Chassagne has expanded her backup singing and really perfects the vulnerability in Sprawl II. Admittedly, this is less Americana than previous albums, as the effervescent violin and volatile percussion is distinctly muted, nevertheless achieving its suburban atmosphere. There are too many excellent songs to list, but my favorites include "Wasted Hours", "We Used to Wait", "Modern Man" and the title track. The Suburbs is a really powerful album, a quietly desperate Brian De Palma suburban gunfight erupting within indiscriminate cul-de-sacs across the country, perhaps right now in your neighborhood.
Play it Loud! play it often. First you will like it. Later, you will love it. August 7, 2010
Craig LeHoullier (Raleigh, NC USA)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
I love albums that draw you in....you listen through once, a few songs hit you. You find yourself playing them in your head all day long. You listen again, different songs start to come to life. Soon, it becomes a go-to listen in the car, at home, during a walk on the iPod. There are different things to find, but there is depth, complexity, and always more to discover.
Well, this appears to be such a piece of music. When the first two teaser songs appeared on some websites - The Suburbs and Month of May - because they were out of context, it was hard to make sense of what was about to be released. But that first song actually sets up a remarkable experience - in a way, I consider this to be one 60 minute song with different episodes and moods and tempos, but an overall meaning.
Rather than repeat some of the excellent reviews already posted - the song-by-song analyses, and the very insightful review that equates the different songs to different periods in recent rock music history (a brilliant analysis), I will just say that this is the best 3.99 I've spent in a long, long time. All of the songs have merit, and some are positively infectious. It is clear that great care was put into the instrumentation - nothing is out of place, and just near everything works. Some of the songs are easy to connect to immediately - Ready to Start, Empty Room, Suburban War, and Sprawl II are near perfect and amongst the best works Arcade Fire have created. But even what appears at first listen to be a bit of a throwaway song like Month of May fits perfectly in the track order, and builds and adds touches throughout.
This music from Arcade Fire is a gift to us all - to all of us who have the patience to listen, wait, then be amazed. And to a fifty something like me, there are so many touches of nostalgia in different genres of rock I experienced that this music brings great joy and meaning to me. Bravo!
It's a grower August 16, 2010
J. Stewart (Raleigh, NC)
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
4 1/2 stars. This album isn't like Funeral, it doesn't leap out of the speakers and slap you across the face. The first time I played it, I wasn't so sure. I had one raised eyebrow for most of it going "hmmmm..." Each time since then, I've liked it more and more. At first I thought it lacked the passion of their first two outings, but I hear now that it does have passion, it's just in a more subtle and less bombastic, dramatic way. The bad reviews here are probably people who've only given it one listen. It takes a bit to digest and click.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 95
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