To say it simply, Arcade Fire is still sad, but no longer depressed. They’re ready to swim through their misery, not sink in it.
Opening with piano-filled melodies akin to a ’60s sitcom sound track, the band’s third full-length studio effort, “The Suburbs,” is a melancholy venture, picking up to some extent where 2007’s “Neon Bible” left off. This time around, however, the Canadian-based indie rock septet ditches the ecclesiastical irony and choir-like choruses of the former and raises the volume a notch.
Haunting imagery and societal snapshots are still there, though this time on a smaller scale ““ front man and songwriter Win Butler trades politically edged lyrics of a global scope for some introspection that hits closer to home. “The Suburbs” is aptly titled for this change of scene, one that returns to the numbered neighborhoods of 2004’s “Funeral,” though this time things are a little less eerie.
The opening title track appropriately sets the theme of the album ““ getting older. As if reading pages of a journal, Butler sighs, “I want a daughter while I’m still young / I wanna hold her hand / And show her some beauty / Before this damage is done.”
There are traces of early Bruce Springsteen, most notably on the nostalgic rock ode “City with No Children,” a bittersweet drive down the old block. Butler wistfully sings of lost innocence, “I wish I could have loved you then / Before our age was through / And before a world war does with us whatever it will do.” Here and sprinkled throughout the album, heavier bass lines debut and gently nudge Arcade Fire a little further into the realms of rock.
At a hefty 16 tracks long, “The Suburbs” is by traditional standards a double album. However, this daunting dosage grows dreary at times. Repetitively dark reflections on growing up weigh heavy and are dragged through the album’s entirety.
Yet despite this darkness, the lyrically rich if redundant themes of lost childhood and forgotten neighborhoods are also what seamlessly hold the album together. There is tangible emotion, reluctant adulthood and feelings of alienation in once-familiar places ““ none of them all too foreign to the ear.
In airwaves clouded by the muffled incoherence of indie drones a dime a dozen, these lyrics ring consistently clear.
While Butler is the blatantly dominant voice on “The Suburbs,” it is his wife, front woman Regine Chassagne whose vocals shine on the album. The symphonic “Empty Room” showcases her voice best, accompanied by a fierce violin with a hair-raising sound suggestive of an older time. Yet despite her vocal talent, her lyrics are less intelligible, and thus less memorable.
Triumphant standouts “Modern Man,” “Half Light II (No Celebration)” and “Suburban War,” easily among the more memorable tracks on the album, are classic Arcade Fire, subtly polished off with a bit of good old ’80s synthesizing.
With “Funeral” and “Neon Bible” as stepping stones, “The Suburbs” reflects a more mature Arcade Fire. They’ve figured out what they’ve wanted to say and they say it relatively well ““ that is, only relatively concisely. With a track list cluttered by a collection of Roman numerals and parenthesized titles, it seems the Canadian group just couldn’t decide when to call it quits, exhausting an otherwise good thing.