Arcade Fire 2010 (fltr: Tim Kingsbury. Jeremy Gara, Richard Reed Parry, Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Will Butler, Sarah Neufeld)
Introduction
In 2010 there were two bands whose new music I devoured, whose live videos I watched religiously and whose concerts I prayed for: LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire. On July 30, 2010, I bought the latest Arcade Fire album The Suburbs and was (once again) mesmerized.
Arcade Fire
In 2010 Arcade Fire was still an indie band that was lauded by music lovers and critics. Their music was deviating, driven, original and warm. Their live shows were events that garnered sincere feelings of togetherness, solidarity and emotion, convincing even the most hardened cynic.
The band had broken through 6 years before with their brilliant debut album Funeral, an album I played to death for months on end, in conjunction with the debut album by LCD Soundsystem. In 2007 the second Arcade Fire album Neon Bible was released, an album that was a lot darker than the disarming debut, but was generally received as another masterpiece and a great follow-up to Funeral, which had already reached the ‘classic’ status by then.
The band was a popular guest at many festivals, usually wiping out other bands and/or competitors. Audiences loved the band, who were able to equal and surpass their studios sound on stage with their (non-standard) analog instruments and rich arrangements. Arcade Fire was predicted to have a bright and promising future.
On May 27, 2010, Arcade Fire announced that their new album The Suburbs would be released on August 2, 2010, in the UK and Europe, and a day later in the US. That very same day the single The Suburbs / Month Of May was released. The music world was in another uproar. The very critical Pitchfork (American music website, pretending to represent ‘good taste’) had just one word to say: Finally! It wasn’t the only publication who just couldn’t wait. Music lovers all around the world were eagerly awaiting all things to come, myself included.
On the day of the announcement Will Butler was interviewed for the Canadian CBC News, Arts & Entertainment:
It just takes so long to put out an album, like after you finish, it takes, you know, two and a half months. And we really just wanted to get stuff out there as soon as we can. I mean I wish we were as big as Radiohead, and we could just post it for free online the second we finished it, cuz that, I mean, that’s the dream of when you make music.
Will Butler interview, CBC News, Arts & Entertainment, 05/27/2010
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
The Suburbs
Contrary to earlier reports, the album was already available on July 30, 2010, in Dutch retail stores. I bought the album, told my family I was going to the attic not to be disturbed, listening to the album. Which I did: I started with two turns in a row. I clearly remember it left me deeply impressed.
According to rumor, Arcade Fire spent six months recording the album in Montreal and New York. The songs were primarily written by bandleader and singer Win Butler. He then brought the songs to the band, and together they developed them into the versions heard on the album.
Theme
The album’s main theme is growing up in “the suburbs”. Win and Will Butler were raised in such a neighborhood in Houston, Texas.
Both me and Win grew up in the suburbs of Houston and we sort of wanted to directly address that, as opposed to pretending we were tough kids from the inner city, or hobos who rode the rails, or something, you know.
Will Butler interview, CBC News, Arts & Entertainment, 05/27/2010
In other interviews Win Butler added:
A lot of my heroes, from Bob Dylan to Joe Strummer, were suburban kids who had to pretend they were train-hoppers their whole lives. Talking about an experience, and not make-believe, is what we’re doing on ‘The Suburbs’.
Win Butler interview, NPR Music, 05/27/2010
The album’s neither a love letter nor an indictment of the suburbs… it’s a letter from the suburbs.
Win Butler interview, NME, 07/31/2010
The album is centered around the theme of the suburbs, but geared to the fact that by then some of those 1970s neighborhoods had already been replaced by new buildings, corporations, car parks and/or large shopping malls. The feeling that the last tangible remains of one’s childhood have been taken away, never to return again.
Music
Win Butler also addressed the music on the album: “Two poles of the album, maybe have a rock’n’roll thing, then more electronics. The album lies between these extremes.” (NPR Music, 05/27/2010). A few weeks later Win said that the music “is a mix of the Depeche Mode and Neil Young. That’s kind of a weird combo, and if it doesn’t sound weird then I think it’s a success” (BBC Newsbeat, 07/08/2010). And sometime later he stated he had wanted the album to sound like “the bands that I heard when I was very young, and wondered what those crazy noises were” (NME, 07/31/2010).
The Depeche Mode and Neil Young namechecks are nice and partially summarize the album’s music, but Kate Bush and Blondie could have just as easily been pointed at for reference. The album itself is eclectic (regular readers of my blog know what this means: top-album!) and varied and contains the heaviest song Arcade Fire ever recorded, next to jingle-jangle folky songs.
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Promo
The Suburbs
The song developed itself when Win Butler received a photo from a teenage friend “at the mall around the corner from where we lived”. It set the band on a course back to their youth. It also confronted them with closed-off or even non-existent buildings, parks, rivers even, etc. Resignation and melancholy set to a beautiful musical theme. Great opener.
The kids want to be so hard
But in my dreams, we’re still screaming
And running through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they built in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothing at all
Meant nothing at all, it meant nothing
Win Butler has stated that this song felt like the start of a new project/album. It was the first song to be recorded for the The Suburbs album.
Ready To Start
Don’t give in to expectations from others. Stay true to yourself and follow your dreams.
Now I’m ready to start
I would rather be wrong
Than live in the shadows of your song
My mind is open wide
And now I’m ready to start
And now I’m ready to start
My mind is open wide
And now I’m ready to start
Not sure you’ll open the door
To step out into the dark
Now I’m ready
Modern Man
Early January 2011 Win Butler stated in Q Magazine that “The idea behind it is that it’s a happy song with a fucked-up time signature. Which is kind of like the modern experience.” Does the song also address conformity and pushing back at people who go beyond the beaten paths?
In my dream, I was almost there
Then they pulled me aside and said, “You’re going nowhere”
I know we are the chosen few, but we waste it
And that’s why we’re still waiting
Rococo
The song mocks youngsters that like to use fancy words they don’t understand. Régine Chassagne: “Win was strumming the chords on the guitar and I was on the couch and said, ‘Hey, those chords sound like baroque music, so the words rococo comes from baroque.” The original Rococo art form was criticized for being more about appearances than actual content.
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Promo
Empty Room
Great rock song with vocals by the Butler/Chassagne couple, dealing with loneliness.
I’m alone again
When I’m by myself
I can be myself
And my life is coming
But I don’t know when
City With No Children
A metaphor for cities where the life has been sucked out of. The song contains the quote “You never trust a millionaire quoting the Sermon on the Mount” stemming from the book Why I Write by George Orwell, Win Butler’s favorite author. Win explained:
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in Williamsburg or those parts of London where everyone is 30 years old, everyone has the same haircut and there’s no kids, no older adults, almost an oppressiveness at not having real human life on display in society. On the one side you have a lot of pressure to be part of a commercial society, and everyone’s trying to sell you something all the time. And then on the other side there’s this kind of hipness, and trying to find what’s cool, which has also a certain amount of emptiness associated with it. I think it’s really difficult to try and navigate those two extremes.
Win Butler interview, NME, 07/31/2010
Half Light I & Half Light II (No Celebration)
Half Light I is a moving introduction, where dusk (the road to maturity?), describes looking at things differently/in another light as opposed to ordinary day light, giving a different meaning to those same subjects/things.
Half Light II (No Celebration) is about relocation/moving(?) or maybe about a different way of looking at what once was or is about to happen.
Oh, this city’s changed so much
Since I was a little child
Pray to God I won’t live to see
The death of everything that’s wild
Though we knew this day would come
Still, it took us by surprise
In this town where I was born
I now see through a dead man’s eyes
Suburban War
A song about friendship and how friendship changes through the years. About how someone’s theme (named “war”) isn’t your theme anymore, or someone’s music isn’t your music anymore.
In the suburbs, I
I learned to drive
And you told me we would never survive
So grab your mother’s keys, we leave tonight
But you started a warThat we can’t win
They keep erasing all the streets
We grew up in
Now the music divides
Us into tribes
You choose your side
I’ll choose my sideAll my old friends, they don’t know me now
All my old friends are staring through me now
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Promo
Month Of May
The heaviest song Arcade Fire ever recorded, the punky Month Of May. Win Butler explained “The winters are so crazy and long there that when spring comes there’s almost this violent energy. The song tries to capture that pent up feeling and excitement about wanting to go outside again. It was a simple song so it needed a simple tune to go with it” (Q magazine, January 2011). Régine Chassagne added “It’s the sound of the wind outside our home in Montreal.”
Wasted Hours
Boredom, dreaming of something different, something better, something bigger. A big theme for suburban youths. Cities offer excitement, the promise of a future that seems to be out of reach (for now).
All those wasted hours we used to know
Spent the summer staring out the window
The wind, it takes you where it wants to go
First, they built the road, then they built the town
That’s why we’re still driving around and around
And all we see
Are kids in the buses, longing to be free
Deep Blue
The name of the IBM computer who beat chess Grandmaster Garri Kasparov in 1996. It was the song the band struggled with the most.
A song like ‘Deep Blue’ we tried many different ways. We finished it as this total synth song and it kind of left us cold. Me and my brother were playing around with some stuff at home and we found this balance between this almost demo quality and the synth stuff. While making this record I re-read [Radiohead guitarist] Ed O’Brien’s diary about making ‘Kid A.’ There were a couple of songs where he says, ‘We started this a year-and-a-half ago and it’s the simplest song on the album. We’ve just mixed it and it sounds like how it did on day one. It took us a year to finish.’ I think sometimes the simplest stuff takes the longest.
Win Butler interview, Clash magazine, 2010
We Used To Wait
A song inspired by waiting for (love)letters, in a time where we weren’t online yet and could only communicate by telephone (which was expensive) and/or letters.
In high school I had a letter-writing romance with a girl. I was trying to remember that time… waiting an entire summer, pretty much half a year, the anxiousness of waiting for letters to arrive.
All day every day there’s almost this cloud of feeling hanging over everything. We’d [his family] be in Maine, I’d walk down to the post office and come back… the whole day was consumed by that feeling.
Win Butler interview, NME, 07/31/2010
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Album cover shoot
Sprawl I (Flatland) & Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
One of the (many) highlights on the album. “Sprawl” represents expansion/inflation of cities/villages. Sprawl I (Flatland) sets the tone.
Took a drive into the sprawl
To find the house where we used to stay
We couldn’t read the number in the dark
You said “let’s save it for another day”Took a drive into the sprawl
To find the places we used to play
It was the loneliest day of my life
You’re talking at me, but I’m still far away
Contrary to most songs addressing Houston, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) is about Montreal, the city Régine Chassagne grew up in. Probably the reason she takes on the lead-vocals on this song. A truly glorious song, by the way.
Living in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains
And there’s no end in sight
I need the darkness
Someone, please cut the lights!
In this case “darkness” is the way to escape the fuss and pressures of everyday life, even if it’s just for a few moments.
The Suburbs (Continued)
Even though it wasn’t all a bed of roses, the youth (and location it was spent in) was gorgeous, for all its boredom, change and so-called progress actively contributed to the way we are today.
If I could have it back
All the time that we wasted
I’d only waste it again
If I could have it back
You know I would love to waste it again
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Album covers
Album cover
The Suburbs‘s album cover came in 8 different versions. The same car (1979 Mercedes Benz 280 SE) parked in front of a wall, with a photo if a suburban house projected on it.
The original idea was to drive from Montreal to Houston and take photos alongside the highway, but it turned out rather monotonous. The second plan was to drive through the Butlers’ old neighborhood and shoot photos. Several photos were projected on to a wall, with the intent of creating timeless images. The photos could have just as easily have been shot in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s as 2010.
Arcade Fire – Grammys 2011
Reception
As was the case with both predecessors Funeral and Neon Bible, The Suburbs was lauded and generally hailed as a classic, and was almost instantly labeled as Arcade Fire’s best album yet. Arcade Fire was unbeatable around 2010.
The album appeared on almost every end-of-year list all over the world and won an incredible amount of awards in 2011, like the Polaris Music Prize, Album Of The Year at the Juno Awards, Album Of The Year at the Grammy Awards and International Album at the BRIT Awards.
Besides the artistic praise, The Suburbs was a commercial success as well. Arcade Fire was still a little indie band, who was held in high esteem, but didn’t have the sales numbers to show for it. The album debuted at the number 1 position in the American Billboard Top 200 (!) and made the top 5 in almost every European country. The album sold over 1 million copies worldwide, an impressive number for an indie release.
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Ad
Review
Well, what can I say about this album that hasn’t been said already? I loved it then, and I listened to it a lot when writing this article, and I still love it now. The album is flawless from beginning to end. The atmosphere, the subject, the nostalgia set against hope is stunning. The contrast between destruction and renewal is exciting, to this day.
Win Butler turned 30 in 2010, the age where people start to wonder how life should continue from here on out, but also to reflect, look back and ask the question David Byrne formulated in the year Win Butler was born: “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?'”. Similar themes using different musical outings. In both cases, it provided the audience with invasive, beautiful and moving music.
One of the key phrases on the album, according to me that is, stems from The Suburbs, the song:
So can you understand
That I want a daughter while I’m still young?
I want to hold her hand
And show her some beauty before this damage is done
The combination of decay, new life and hope is all telling. The fact that, despite all of its ugliness, there is still room to bring new life into that very same world, is almost soothing. Generally speaking, life is worth it, so much so that is has to be shown to and experienced by new life.
The Suburbs is accessible without being commercial, delivers high production value without sounding chewed and predictable, possesses a high musical level without getting bogged down in musical self-absorption. This is an album that can only be rewarded the highest praise and is required listening for everyone with a soft spot for indie.
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Singles
Singles
No less than 6 singles were culled from The Suburbs:
- The Suburbs/Month Of May
(released on May 27, 2010) - We Used To Wait
(released on August 2, 2010) - Ready To Start
(released in August/September 2010) - City With No Children (promo only)
(released on March 14, 2011) - Speaking In Tongues (promo only)
(released on June 27, 2011) - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
(released on April 21, 2012)
Arcade Fire – The Wilderness Downtown
Videos
Official videos were made for the singles The Suburbs, Ready To Start and Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains, all of them available on the Arcade Fire channel on YouTube.
We Used To Wait was used in a project called The Wilderness Downtown, a website developed by Google Creative Lab and graphical artist Chris Milk (the site still exists, but isn’t really functional anymore). Users, using the then recently released Google Chrome browser, could enter their own “suburb”, which resulted in a personalized (video) experience using the Arcade Fire song in the background.
Spike Jonze made a short film, Scenes From The Suburbs, which was debuted at the International Film Festival in Berlin 2011. Some Arcade Fire members played a part in the film, which attempts to make a story out of the bits and pieces still living in our memories.
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Booklet photos
Songs
All songs written by Arcade Fire (Will Butler, Win Butler, Régine Chassagne, Jeremy Gara, Tim Kingsbury, Sarah Neufeld, Richard Reed Parry).
- The Suburbs
- Ready To Start
- Modern Man
- Rococo
- Empty Room
- City with No Children
- Half Light I
- Half Light II (No Celebration)
- Suburban War
- Month Of May
- Wasted Hours
- Deep Blue
- We Used To Wait
- Sprawl I (Flatland)
- Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
- The Suburbs (Continued)
The first copies of the album were accompanied by a 7″ single of Ready To Start and a post card.
On June 27, 2011, The Suburbs – Deluxe Edition was released, which contained the original album, and two extra songs: Culture War and Speaking In Tongues (featuring David Byrne) and a longer version of Wasted Hours, called Wasted Hours (A Life That We Can Live). The release also contained the movie Scenes From The Suburbs on DVD.
Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Deluxe Edition
Musicians
Arcade Fire consists of several multi-instrumentalists, its band members change instruments on every song. The lead vocals are reserved for the couple Win Butler and Régine Chassagne.
- Will Butler
- Win Butler – vocals, except on Empty Room, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
- Régine Chassagne – vocals on Empty Room, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains); co-vocals on Rococo, Half Light I
- Jeremy Gara
- Tim Kingsbury
- Sarah Neufeld
- Richard Reed Parry
With help from:
- Sarah Neufeld, Owen Pallett, Richard Reed Parry, Marika Anthony Shaw – strings
- Clarice Jensen, Nadia Sirota, Yuki Numata, Caleb Burhans, Ben Russell, Rob Moose – more strings
- Colin Stetson – saxophone on Suburban War, We Used To Wait, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
- Pietro Amato – French horn on We Used To Wait, Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Arcade Fire – Scenes From The Suburbs
After The Suburbs
The band went out on an elaborate tour and went back into the studio with LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, amongst others. The resulting Reflektor was released on October 18, 2013. It once again provided the band with great reviews and sales numbers, comparable to The Suburbs. On July 18, 2017, the album Everything Now was released, which garnered mixed reviews, but was a commercial success.
The following album, We, released on May 6, 2022, restored the reviewers’ faith somewhat, but was a commercial disappointment. On August 27, 2022, band leader Win Butler was accused of sexual misconduct, something Butler (to this day) vehemently denied. The accusations have not led to official indictments. The tour following the release of We was plagued by disappointing ticket sales and/or people not showing up and support acts that withdrew themselves from the tour.
On May 9, 2025, the band released Pink Elephant, an album that was badly received by critics and audiences alike. It was the first ever Arcade Fire album to not even enter the Billboard Top 200. It’s one thing for an album to not be successful, it’s quite another for an Arcade Fire album release to be met with total indifference. The contrast with 2010 couldn’t be bigger, as, at that time, critics and music lovers all around the world couldn’t wait for new material.
Arcade Fire – 2010 logo
In closing
In 2010 Arcade Fire was at the top of their game and their popularity was still rising. Rightfully so, The Suburbs is and always will be a classic album, that deserves a place in every record collection.
What’s your take? Let me know!
Video/Spotify
This story contains an accompanying video. Click on the following link to see it: Video: Arcade Fire and the album I was waiting for, The Suburbs. The A Pop Life playlist on Spotify has been updated as well.
