Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs” (Merge) Rating: 3.5/4
Bandleader Win Butler is a man of contradictions, which he fully owns up to. “Like a record that’s skipping, I’m a modern man,” he sings on the third track from Arcade Fire’s third album, “The Suburbs.” With the much-acclaimed full-length debut “Funeral” (2004), a meditation on death and loss, and the follow-up “Neon Bible” (2007), a consideration of the hollowness of religion, his Montreal orchestral-pop collective has made some of the most personal, heartfelt, and unashamedly un-ironic music that the indie underground has produced since Neutral Milk Hotel, which just happened to record for the same label. At the same time, the rousing, anthemic nature of the group’s roiling grooves marked it as the one indie band of the last two decades that actually could make it to the arenas—or at least the main-stage headlining slots at Coachella or Lollapalooza.
Not that Arcade Fire necessarily wants to be the hipster Springsteen or U2, as some critics posit.
