Team Sassypants

“THE SUBURBS” - ARCADE FIRE

This band… this band is a force. No one else so gracefully knows how to balance the darkness and the light of bittersweet thematic music and lyrics. Bright songs are accompanied by miserable sentiment. Minor keys and muffled tones are brimming with hope. They consistently manage to stir everything inside of you at every turn. I cannot believe how gently they do it this time around with the title track from their forthcoming LP, “The Suburbs.” In the third verse, Win Butler get so earnest you can’t help but feel your heart drop to your knees, professing how truly defeated he feels that he can’t shield the naivete of a young girl from a decaying world, offering up the alternative “then bring me a son,” assuming a young man could muster it more. It just hurts, but its beautiful pain. And don’t even get me started on the lilting electric mandolin lines above the jangling melody. It feels pure, but burgeoning.

This band is beyond my ever present hype train rant having effectively soundtracked my coming of age. The rallying cries of Funeral. The system-challenging movements of Neon Bible. If thematically these last two albums brought us from the neighborhood to the beginning of a revolution, I feel like “The Suburbs” is going to take a more intrinsic step and point out all the private and public faults and fears that happen within the four walls of the home and our hearts. Based on this lead track, I again feel the great Arcade Fire imbalance - this time of vulnerability and confidence - knowing yet again that we live in a weird and often disasterous world, but there’s endless beauty in the nuance, and also in the recognition that nothing is ever perfect. This song makes me yearn for the best of my past as I face the function of my present and pangs of fear for meeting my hopes in the future.

“move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass ‘cause its already past, sometimes i cant believe it, im moving past the feeling, in my dreams we’re still screaming…”