SONG OF THE DAY
“The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire (The Suburbs, Merge Records, 2010). Written and composed by Sarah Neufeld, Richard Reed Parry, Jeremy Gara, Win Butler, Will Butler, Regine Chassagne & Tim Kingsbury.
INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)
– The Suburbs is the third studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire.
– Coinciding with the announcement of the new album, the band released a limited edition 12-inch single containing two tracks from the album, “The Suburbs” and “Month of May”.
– The album debuted at #1 on the Irish Chart, the UK Chart, the U.S. Billboard 200 chart, and the Canadian Chart.
– The album’s lyrical content is inspired by band members Win and William Butler’s upbringing in the suburbs of Houston. According to Win Butler, the album “is neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs – it’s a letter from the suburbs.”
– The album was recorded in Win Butler and Régine Chassagne’s residence in Montreal, with some parts being recorded at the band’s studio in Quebec and in New York City.
– Win Butler describes the overall sound of The Suburbs as “a mix of Depeche Mode and Neil Young,” stating that he wanted the album to sound like “the bands that I heard when I was very young, and wondered what those crazy noises were.”
– The band pressed each completed song to a 12″ lacquer, then recorded it back for the digital master of the album. As a result, the CD and digital versions of the album sound the same as the vinyl, although, as with most recent CD and digital releases, there is some compression applied.
– The album has received widely positive reviews from critics. Collating 39 reviews, the review aggregator website Metacritic gave the album an average score of 86%, which puts it into the category of “universal acclaim”.
– Writing for the BBC, Mike Diver wrote, “The Suburbs is [Arcade Fire’s] most thrillingly engrossing chapter yet; a complex, captivating work that, several cycles down the line, retains the magic and mystery of that first tentative encounter.” Referring to the critically acclaimed 1997 Radiohead album, Diver went on to say, “You could call it their OK Computer. But it’s arguably better than that.”
– Arcade Fire is an indie rock band based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and fronted by the husband and wife duo of Win Butler and Régine Chassagne.
– In addition to instrument mainstays guitar, drums and bass guitar, members play piano, violin, viola, cello, double bass, xylophone, glockenspiel, keyboard, French horn, accordion, harp, mandolinand hurdy-gurdy. The band takes most of their instruments on tour, and the multi-instrumentalist band members switch instrumental duties throughout their shows.
– Arcade Fire have won numerous awards, including both the Meteors 2008 Best International Album award and the Juno Awards 2008 Alternative Album of the Year award for Neon Bible. It has also been nominated for the Best Alternative Music Album Grammy in 2005 for Funeral and in 2008 for Neon Bible.