Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (in brief)

The Suburbs has now played twice through consecutively on my laptop. The 16-track album has a lot of well-crafted rock tunes that seem like they will require many more listens before they can be fully appreciated. The majority of the album does not sound like too much of a departure from their previous two releases, but "Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains)" takes the band into an 80s synth pop world (reference: Blondie "Heart of Glass)-a jarring contrast. Yet upon further exposure, it begins to seem fitting that a song about suburban sprawl and shopping malls is performed in such a gaudy, synthesized manner. As the album comes to a close with the haunting "The Suburbs (continued)" that follows, the sad reality of the previous song becomes apparent. Minimally accompanied by melancholy strings, the chorus that began the album echoes and echoes "sometimes I can't believe it, I'm moving past the feeling--again." The sprawl out of the city and into the gated community is shown as the sprawl from feeling to fake; from art to artifice-- A fantastic ending to a solid concept album.