Album Review : Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

August 27, 2010 | Jitterbug

I’ve taken a lot of crap from a lot of people for my glowing reviews of past Arcade Fire albums.  This article isn’t going to help me in that regard in any way at all because I plan on gushing yet again.  Get your raincoats on and come with me as I gleefully slobber, gush, and get other body juices all over this Canadian band’s newest masterpiece.

Win Butler and his wife, Regine Chassagne, started Arcade Fire back in 2003 and have been blazing an exciting trail for modern music ever since.  Their first full album, Funeral, released in 2004, was a sprawling work, with a musical backbone that felt too sturdy for a first album.  The range of sound that was pulled together in that album was stunning, and a feet rarely achieved by a band until after they have been playing together for decades.  It couldn’t have been done without the myriad of other artists that they pulled together, but with the group consisting of 7 members playing multiple instruments, Arcade Fire required a masterful orchestrator to keep the music from turning into a jumbled mess of noise.  The Butlers did it, and they haven’t stopped since.

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