Let’s take a moment to remember The Arcade Fire’s previous two albums. First up we have Funeral, a capital moment in music in the last decade. Funeral was an album about death, obviously. It was an album about the way death affects you while growing up; death’s distant but inescapable pull. Death’s pervasiveness. Its inevitability. Funeral was so personal, you couldn’t help but think you’ve been listening to it since you were born after hearing it for the first time. It’s one of the few times I’ve felt an album’s existed way before its inception in 2004.
Then came Neon Bible, a valiant effort that brought no shame to the band after expectations that could have crushed others appeared. Neon Bible screamed of grandiose ideas, and scary thoughts in a changing world it descended upon.
Now of course, comes The Suburbs. If Funeral was about childhood and growing up, and Neon Bible was about being a grown-up and the angst that comes along with that, The Suburbs fits right between the two. The Suburbs is not about maturity, nor its onset. It’s about maturity’s realization, the singular moment in which one takes a break and realizes it’s over. Childhood’s over, and one knows not what to feel. The Arcade Fire have a clue or two and it comes in the shape of this album.
