A disco backbeat and massive keyboard bassline blast skyward, achieving the sort of anthemic release Arcade Fire has perfected, a moment of catharsis that’s been brewing for nearly the entire album. But Chassagne’s vocal turn on “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” redeems. A vein of emptiness and Beckett-esque waiting courses throughout as so often in real life, these suburbs are a kind of purgatory with no exit in sight. Arcade Fire seems to be testing us, luring us down into the lowlands. Where past Arcade Fire songs built upwards, these unfurl flat and wide the euphoric spikes that served as Funeral and Neon Bible’s beloved rallying points are strangely absent here, spaced farther and farther apart. Vast stretches feel tamped down, as if the album is sonically emulating its subject. But swelling at 16 songs and an hour-plus runtime, it’s Arcade Fire’s most ambitious and concept-driven effort to date. At first listen, The Suburbs didn’t seem likely to bear the same iconographic heft as its predecessors.
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