1. kango

   9

   Arcade Fire's third album is a little different to their previous two. On first listen, it appears that the crescendos and walls of sound we've come to expect have mostly been faded out to be replaced by more space and an unhurried saunter through the places the Butler's grew up in. None of this is bad; the band as tight and melodies as gorgeous as ever. Two tracks highlight the band's fondness for new sounds. The first, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) goes into electro territory, Regine's vocals perfectly complimenting the mirrorball soundtrack. The second, Month Of May takes things in the direction of straight ahead punk rock but is no less stirring than when the church organs are ramped up to 11. These are sounds I hope we will be hearing more of in the future. For now though, this is a very modern blend of folk rock and synth pop which should open the door to wider popularity. Best of the homely gems for my money is City With No Children. It quickly achieves lift-off the same way as Rebellion or No Cars Go do on previous albums. And then back down to earth... but never for long. It's this pattern of peaks and troughs that run throughout the album; a collection of stunningly played songs put together with some thought. One reason to press an album on to plastic, and then play it from beginning to end.… Expand

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2. MorganK

   5

   Not in the ballpark of Funeral, though they do work to recreate that sparer sound, largely dropping the bombast from the trying-too-hard Neon Bible. They certainly have pushed their early The Cure influences to the forefront. It starts fairly strong - The Suburbs (and its album-closing revisit) is solid and Ready to Start is certainly the highlight of the album - but the majority of the tracks that follow fall rather flat. Modern Man fulfills the E-Street comparisons they've garnered for a while and is pretty dire, lyrically. The hipster-bashing Rococo is a fire and a miss, attacking a strawman target, and even worse, is annoying. Empty Room is short and pretty, but disappears quickly into the hand-clappy and dull City With No Children and the Beach House-y Half Light I. The tempo, and quality, picks back up briefly with the the second part, Half Light II, which wouldn't sound out of place on Achtung Baby. Month of May serves as a merciful change of pace, a little bit poppy post-punk, but it's still remarkably slight. After that, the album pretty much disappears into an unmemorable haze until it hits the two-part The Sprawl - the first half, Flatland, is pretty great and is the only thing that sounds like a genuine moment on the record. Too bad then it's followed up with the ABBA-esque second half, Mountains Beyond Mountains, with the most eye-rolling put-upon-artist lyrics in an album already filled with them: "They heard me singing and they told me to stop / quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock." Sadly, the album frequently delves into pitting the narrator against a phantom 'Them' or 'They' which is a really juvenile antagonist, it's vague, paranoid, and uninformed. If the band's hook is a world-weary adult's look back at the decline of childhood innocence, the lazy intangible of 'they' undermines anything learned from it. The repeated focus on being children and having children (riding bikes, running through the yard, learning to drive, etc.) and on placing them both in a nostalgic 1982 Steven Spielberg neighborhood ultimately doesn't cover any ground that the far superior Funeral didn't, and the lack of that record's energy, pathos and lyrical acumen make this seem largely redundant, and clearly lesser. I get that's the Arcade Fire's shtick, and perhaps it's not fair to always hold a band up to their earlier high-water mark, but the band themselves are so insistent on revisiting those same themes that the comparison is all but inevitable. There's a point where the romanticizing of childhood wonder falls away to a creepy Peter Pan refusal to accept growing up. Ultimately, a pretty solid disappointment, especially coming after the just-ok Neon Bible, and it leaves you with a feeling of a fizzled band that couldn't top their early flash of inspiration - a story arc not dissimilar to The Strokes. It's not awful, by any means, but it's uninspired and frequently just dull. There are so many directions that Arcade Fire could have taken their sound and achieved something compelling - I'm thinking of Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, Nick Cave's From Her to Eternity, Folklore, an orchestral take on Liars' Drum's Not Dead - anything but a less-engaging, overlong rehash of the album they made their name on.… Expand

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3. JayTee

   1

   Arcade Fire just might be the second most overrated and pretentious band around today (the top spot would have to go to Animal Collective). Every song on The Suburbs is bland and lacking in even the smallest amount of entertainment. Funeral had it's bareable moments, but their last two releases prove that music nowadays has been cheapened to lazy and boring melodies. It makes me shudder to think great indie bands go unnoticed while the lame ones seem to thrive.… Expand

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