Be cool or be cast out

Win Butler isn’t the first songwriter to tackle suburban sprawl. Without it, Jello Biafra wouldn’t have had anything to spew his vitriol at on those classic Dead Kennedys records and Neil Peart’s greatest work as Rush’s lyricist would never have been “Subdivisions.”

Where Butler’s take on that place between the bright lights and the far, unlit unknown deviates from that of his predecessors is that he isn’t wholly condemning of the ‘burbs.

In fact, the lyric booklet to Arcade Fire’s third LP, “The Suburbs,” sometimes reads more like a tribute to those uniquely North American hamlets.

Whereas on their genre-bending debut “Funeral,” the songs’ protagonists are trying to dig tunnels out of their neighborhoods, “The Suburbs” sees them driving back.

It isn’t without its flaws, and the requisite criticisms of consumerism abound (“Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains,” intones Regine Chassagne on album’s highlight “Sprawl II”), but it’s still home.

Musically, “The Suburbs” mostly draws from the more urgent, driving side of Arcade Fire found on songs like “Rebellion (Lies)” and “Wake Up.” Gone is the dreary weltschmerz found in heaps on “Neon Bible”; several of the album’s finest moments are pure bouncing 1980s electro dressed up in the framework of the classic Arcade Fire sound.

The album’s only true downfall is evident even when glancing at the track listing: It has 16 songs, and it’s very rare than any band has 16 unique things to say in a regular album cycle. Arcade Fire is no exception. There’s a 12-track masterpiece hidden somewhere in “The Suburbs” yearning to breathe free, but the handful of tracks that
don’t work hold it back.

It might not be as profound a statement as “Funeral” or even “Neon Bible,” but the latest full-length from Canada’s favorite critical darlings is still a worthwhile investment of any indie fan’s time and money.