The Woodlands, a tract of dormitory suburb housing on the northern reaches of Houston, had to wait 36 years to be made into art. Its pristine streets and boxy houses can never be the same again to any visitor who has listened to Arcade Fire‘s exquisite album, The Suburbs.
The most satisfying records can evoke a time and place without seeming exclusive. Win Butler spent his formative early adolescence in the Woodlands, and has drawn deep on that memory well for the lyrics and soundscapes of songs that are elegiac and bitter by turns, a tribute and reproach to the sprawl that infests all America.
He picks out his theme on the opening title track, a gentle piano-driven exorcism of that suburban existence, singing exultantly of “moving past the feeling and into the light”. The song features one of the subtlest lyrics on an album that has plenty of contenders, as Butler talks about a dream of having a daughter and wanting to “show her some beauty before the damage is done.”
The Suburbs is a very personal, even intimate record. Funeral was fueled by bereavement, but its lasting appeal lay in its dynamics. Neon Bible was all creeping paranoia, edgy panic, in a world gone insane.
The Suburbs is more controlled, a work of studied symmetry, the second 8 songs matching the moods and themes of the first half, ebbing and flowing, but always taking us back to those streets, the innocent anxiety of those teenage bike rides interrupted by suspicious Texas cops.
It’s a record where you’ll change your favourite track every week. Deep Blue‘s chugging period vignettes are irresistible, as is the gentle nostalgic regret of Wasted Hours. We Used To Wait is stunning, but then you keep heading back to the title track . . .
Régine Chassagne, who grew up in St-Lambert, south of Montreal, tries to echo her husband’s mood on Sprawl II, but her lament about being a misunderstood dreamer who just wanted to sing is set to such a life-enhancing chorus that it turns into a glitter-ball celebration disco classic. On stage Chassagne stomps around waving streamers like an affectionate parody of all those cheerleaders, back in all those suburban high schools across North America.
On the 2011 world tour, the biggest cheers were still for the older songs, but time may reveal The Suburbs as Arcade Fire‘s lasting masterpiece.