The Middle Class Are Evil

Ah, the suburbs.  Punching bag of artists, aesthetes, malcontents and the generally disaffected everywhere. Clearly, most of America lives in a wasteland of deferred dreams, nattering, painful, pointless conversations and a secret loathing for themselves that can only end in death or the complete abandonment of all the stifling mores that once held them in thrall.  Think 'American Beauty'.

Enter Arcade Fire's "The Suburbs".  This album topped so many 'best of' lists for 2010 that I just had to dig it out and give it another listen.

Arcade Fire is part of odd little trend in music:  outsized Canadian bands.  Stars, New Pornographers, and Broken Social Scene all come to mind.  They all feature heavy instrumentation (partly due to the sheer number of members in each band), melodramatic subject matter (maybe because they're Canadian?), and indie artistry laid over surprisingly catchy pop-hooks.  For me, it's pretty hit or miss.  Stars "Set Yourself on Fire" was a thrilling, if heavy-handed mishmash of pop-punk anarchism and candy-sweet love songs, while their follow-on "In Our Bedroom After the War" was unlistenably melodramatic.

If you listened to  prior Arcade albums, "Funeral" and "Neon Bible", or any of the bands mentioned above, you have some idea what to expect from "The Suburbs" and Arcade does not disappoint.  These are structurally very simple songs laid over with an eclectic mix of instruments in careful (and often intriguing) arrangements, played with anthem-level intensity.  It's style that works brilliantly on "Neon Bible" - after all, what theme could better suit such an baroque, dramatic style than our culture's near-religious obsession with media and fame?

But it just doesn't suit "The Suburbs".  Every lyric drips with disaffection:

But I would rather be alone
Than pretend I feel alright
If the businessmen drink my blood
Like the kids in art school said they would
Then I guess I'll just begin again

If you're going to pull off words like those, you need some rea Cobain-style bored anger, howled out over a barely-tuned guitar.   But these songs are so intricately played and planned, that the disaffection comes off as a pose. It's like writing a love song in heroic couplets;  Who's going to believe that your heart is pouring out words that just can't be contained anymore when you're rhyming every line?

It's not their most interesting album musically, either.  The driving 'four-on-floor' beats and Springsteen-esque hammering on the guitar doesn't leave much room for dynamic range on this album.  Even weaker tracks on "Neon Bible" (including the title track) vary the feel enough to make the next song that much more interesting contrast.  The segue from "Neon Bible's" spare, thumping drum and aetherial backing vocals to the swelling church organ of "Intervention" keeps the album moving where "The Suburbs" barely even changes tempo.

Slamming the 'burbs is a time-honored trope in hipster circles, but there just isn't much here to give it a new take.  I guess you can't make the kind of sweeping grandiosity that makes Arcade Fire the band they are out of such a nihilist subject.