Arcade Fire brings it back to the suburbs

It's been a while since the releases of Arcade Fire's 2004 debut Funeral and their 2007 follow-up Neon Bible, which were both lauded as critical successes. We were briefly reminded of their emotional resonance with the incredible usage of their song "Wake Up" in the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. A year later, the first few tracks from their newest album leaked, and it felt as if Arcade Fire, fronted by husband and wife team Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, had reappeared after just a winter's hibernation with renewed relevance and energy.

I wasn't the only one that felt this way. Arcade Fire's August release of their third album, The Suburbs, debuted at #1 in the U.S, the UK, Canada, and Ireland. The Suburbs, a well-organized organized concept album, is repetitive without being redundant, both overt and subtle in the display of its themes. It explores the paradoxes of growing up while dissecting the paradoxes of our relationship with technology. More importantly, it explores how both paradoxes constantly complicate our personal relationships.

Win Butler immediately launches into his history with the suburbs in the album's title track, an upbeat tune with jangly guitars and a catchy piano hook. "In the suburbs I/learned to drive," he explains. The song's chorus perfectly summarizes the nostalgia that plagues childhood memories: "Sometimes I can't believe it/I'm movin' past the feeling," he admits, simultaneously examining and denying his memories.

This paradox is possible because in The Suburbs, past and present do not occupy separate spaces; remembering one's childhood is not a black and white endeavor. In the guitar-heavy, mournful "Wasted Hours", Win Butler examines the "wasted hours, before we knew/where to go, and what to do," but then admits that this time wasn't really wasted, it was just "made new/and turned into/a life that we can live." The past isn't dead; it has transformed into the groundwork of the present. In the last track of the album, a muted reprise of the first song, "The Suburbs (continued)", Win sing-whispers that if he could "have it back, all the time that we wasted, I'd only waste it again. If I could have it back, I would love to waste it again."

As much as this album is a meditation on childhood and the literal suburbs of manicured lawns and jogging soccer moms, the suburbs also function as a metaphor for the innocence of the days before Myspace, before Facebook, before Smartphones.

In the suburbs, Win explains in a song with the same name, "we used to wait." He reflects on the letters he used to write, how "he used to sign his name"; this is no longer necessary because "our lives are changing fast." We no longer write letters because we write e-mails and send text messages. We developed new technologies because we were sick of waiting by the mailbox. We forgot about the merit of anticipation. "How it seems strange/how we used to wait for letters to arrive," Win muses, "But what's stranger still/is how something so small can keep you alive."

We're all living in the big city now. The lights in the buildings blink on and off all the time. "I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights," begs Régine in "Sprawls II: Mountains Beyond Mountains", a catchy, bouncy tune reminiscent of Blondie's "Heart of Glass." Sometimes, there is such a thing as too much light; too much knowledge, too much convenience, too much efficiency. We thought we were simplifying everything, but look at what we've complicated in our mad dash for productivity and constant communication.