I'm Living the Arcade Fire Dream?

Neon Bible view of the status quo...
we're still here though.

So it seems the internet has leaked nearly the entirety of the new Arcade Fire album (out 8/2/2010)...well a lot of it was from recent "dark" shows around Canada.  I couldn't hide my anticipation and anxiety over hearing the new sound.  Ever since Funeral, I've been a ravenous consumer of the Arcade Fire's style.  I love their full on assault on music with their simple, dancy rhythms and loud blending of the multi-instruments and voices.  At once both punk and big-band folk, kinda like the hoe-downs of yore. The Suburbs offers more of the same sound you love with as much depth, introspection and power in lyric and music.

Compare this track to the arcade fire...and how so many instruments were blended from bigband jazz, to honky tonk in the early 20th century.  Big Band is probably one way to describe the arcade fire sound, as the cacophony is allowed to crescendo past all of the solos being played.  ...and of course that driving swing rhythm.

Vidya of the "CowBoy Stomp" by Bob Wills

However, as hard as people try to describe the sound of the Arcade Fire, it's hard to pigeonhole these innovators.  They pulling from everything they can for this new album.  It's probably the album from them I've heard (previewed) with the least amount of aural cohesion between tracks, as in, they don't really borrow much from each other musically, just thematically.  Though you can hear sounds that we've previously heard from "Funeral" and "Neon Bible".  This is of course, a strength of the album in my opinion.

Vidya of "We Used to Wait"

We're no longer in the Bush administration's apocalypse, but returning to the dream, drama and nostalgia of life in the suburbs.  Many of us middle class kids grew up there, some of us eschewed the cul-de-sac for the edge of city-life.  Some of us then return to the suburbs to have kids and raise a family...and what I like is basically the question that the album poses is "what do the suburbs mean to you?".  Which is at once deeply personal, and at the same time demands reflection as suburban dwellers continue to be demonized for their use of cars, they expansive, uncontrolled destruction of wild-habitat and farmland re-appropriation, larger per-capita use of power and consumption of goods and services than urbanites etc...

"Ready to Start" is a wonderful example of this.  Superficially, seems to be a  introspection of a suburban dweller who's being drained by his business-job and a breakup with their romantic partner.  Then it turns toward the within with introspection; that personal liberation of having an open mind, and understanding the delusion of romance, the illusions of freedom in the physical realm, and the joy and happiness one can have by being content.  We often need these little moments of near-regret and self-isolation before we have the satori that we're actually ok with our life...that and of course losing your partner.

Vidya of "Ready to Start"

There's no "Powers-Out" statement of social injustice here.  It's just thought provoking and sublimely beautiful.  I like my vegetable garden...and my house...and I sorta talk to my neighbors...with big words like...

Burbs...with delicious parkland and tech-parks

Vidya of "Roccoco" by the Arcade Fire