Tag: The Suburbs

Arcade Fire Win Grammy for Album of the Year

by DJ Ones on Feb.15, 2011, under Daytime

The Suburbs

After a night where The Black Keys took home Alternative Rock Album of the Year, Arcade Fire finished the night with the biggest honor of the evening. Following a spectacular performance of their song Month of May, the Canadian group surprisingly defeated commercial acts including Lady Antebellum, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry. Achieving easily the biggest victory for Merge Records in recent memory, Arcade Fire accepted the award and set back to performing another fantastic track from The Suburbs, “Ready to Start.” This marks the first award for the band, and starting by winning Album of the Year is a feat hard to top. Quickly following their victory, the official twitter account for the band posted, “OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD. Thank you EVERYONE.”

Congratulations to the band on their massive successes.

Leave a Comment :, , , more...

Arcade Fire brings mature, new sound

by Katie Hill on Sep.24, 2010, under Daytime, Pick of the Week

88.1 WKNC Pick of the Week 9/24, written by May F. Chung, WKNC deejay
Listening to Arcade Fire is like listening to an opera. There’s a certain element of grandeur of popping in The Suburbs into the CD drive, an anticipation of knowing that whatever fills your ears for the next 63 minutes is something of high caliber. What do you expect from Arcade Fire, the band that has produced the beautifully wistful Funeral in 2004, and three years later, another genre-defying album entitled Neon Bible but tinged with notes of political intensity? You can hear the sweat of their performance. Win Butler, who has possibly the greatest name in indie rock, and his beloved, Régine Chassagne, both of whom form the backbone of the band, explore some of the themes that pervade most of the album, including its namesake.
Being a kid and growing up in the suburbs, then leaving and accomplishing great things before returning and discovering that everything you left behind—all the memories of innocence and heartbreak—has remained, patiently waiting, and as stoic as ever. The reverent nostalgia is evident in the lyric, “Now our lives are changing fast/Hope that something pure can last,” from “We Used to Wait.” Arcade Fire reflects on the neighborhood you grew up in (literally, as the new video for the song invites you to enter the address where you grew up and personalizes the video to your own childhood memories). The Suburbs is, in fact, a maturation of their last two albums. As the group comes to terms with adulthood, they still cannot help but wonder longingly over the days of kids when they used to dance under police disco lights (a reference to Funeral’s “Laika”). “In my dreams we’re still screamin’ and runnin’ through the yard,” croons Butler in the title’s opener. And yet, there’s a sense of cynicism against the new youth raging for an art form they do not understand. In “Rococo,” the group sings, “Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids/They will eat right out of your hand using great big words that they don’t understand.” There is no inspiration in experimentation anymore. Everything is contrived, art is vapid and self-emulating. Butler continues to chant “Rococo” as the chorus and mutters, “Oh, my dear God, what is that horrible song?” But the statement itself invokes irony.
“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” is easily the best song of the album and neatly ties The Surburbs together. Everything we view as kids is gargantuan, including “Dead shopping malls [that] rise like mountains beyond mountains.” If there’s any showcase of Chassagne’s beautifully hypnotizing voice, it is this song. “Sprawl II” is a component of “Sprawl I (Flatlands),” but both reflect on the same memory of the sprawl, or the home communities of the surburbs where all the houses that line up look the same. For Chassagne, it is a mountain, a childhood reserved for riding bikes and playing in parks. For Butler in “Sprawl I,” it is a flatland, a miserable suffocation of civilized society. Is this the same band that used to crowd all their instruments (including a double bass, xylophone, glockenspiel, French horn, accordion, harp, mandolin and hurdy-gurdy) into the elevator as a delightful experiment? Apparently so. Instead of relying on the success of formula, Arcade Fire strives for a new, vibrant sound on The Suburbs, which serves, if nothing else, as a testament to their own greatness.
88.1 WKNC Pick of the Week is published in every Friday in the print edition of Technician, as well as online at technicianonline.com and wknc.org.
Leave a Comment :, , more...

SounfOff7 Best Coast/Arcade Fire

by DJ Ones on Aug.23, 2010, under Sound Off podcast

sounfoff7_082310We are back from the summer break and this week we focus on new releases from Arcade Fire and Best Coast.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Leave a Comment :, , , more...

Arcade Fire Finally Releases New Single and New Album Details

by DJ Ones on May.27, 2010, under Daytime

The 12” single which was previously teased very briefly by Arcade Fire has finally been released to the world. The two songs which are entitled “The Suburbs” and “Month of May” have been highly anticipated, and the unexpected release of these two new tracks already has music press buzzing about the possibilities of the next full length, which is expected sometime later this year. The two tracks have some questioning whether or not the next LP from the band could possibly be a concept album about a dystopian universe.

Arcade Fire

Since the news has been released, the single has popped up in a Glasgow, Scotland, record store, only with a white label that has basic track info. The picture taken by Chris Ward, the man who found the single in Glasgow is below:

Photo Courtesy of Chris Ward

Hear the tracks for yourself:

“Month of May”

YouTube Preview Image

“The Suburbs”

YouTube Preview Image

**Update**

The Suburbs Cover Art

Since the story broke yesterday afternoon, the band has also announced plans for their upcoming album which will be entitled “The Suburbs.” The album is set to release August 3rd. Will and Win Butler spoke on NPR earlier about the meaning behind their next full length’s title, claiming that is was inspired by their upbringing in Houston.

Leave a Comment :, , , , , , more...

Looking for something?

Use the form below to search the site:

Still not finding what you're looking for? Drop a comment on a post or contact us so we can take care of it!

Visit our friends!

A few highly recommended friends...

Archives

All entries, chronologically...