Some cities make you lose your head...endless suburbs, stretched out thin and dead

Image courtesy of West Of Centre

I grew up adjacent to a suburb that was designed and built in the 1980's, set deep into the seemingly endless sprawl of western Sydney. For many years, a sign hung at the entrance to this suburb, proudly proclaiming it as the "garden suburb of the 80's". This sign hung in that same spot well into the 1990s, as the suburb clung to the idealism and the dream that the sign represented.

As is the case with similar developments the world over, isolation, inadequate employment and cultural opportunities, lengthy commutes and substandard public transportation destroyed any visions of a utopian existence, with its best and brightest taking the hint and leaving at the first chance. This place is now a living monument to fallacy that is the "great Australian dream", with the area now a hot bed of bored and disruptive teens, mortgage stress, and monocultural mediocrity. Once that sign came down, the dream was well and truly over.

Even if we do manage to escape the suburbs, the truth may be that we can never actually escape them. That is the depressing conclusion that Arcade Fire come to, on what is easily their finest record, The Suburbs. This is such a wonderful album, and it is an album in every sense of the word. The fact that it topped the Billboard charts in the US just shows that people still give a shit about quality music and the sanctity of the album.

The Suburbs is a touching and disturbing dissertation on suburban life. One that encapsulates the optimism that awaits outside its borders, and the resignation that comes with accepting the suburbs as an inevitability. Arcade Fire on this album speak from a place of truth, where they document personal experiences of the suburbs in which they were raised with a sort of detachment and perspective that only eventual escape can bring.

Whether musing about shopping malls rising "like mountains beyond mountains" ("Sprawl II"), mocking those who had mortgaged to the hilt and lost what they never really had in the GFC ("Half Light II"), or lamenting the inevitable selling out process that most of us undertake to put food on the table ("Ready to Start"), Arcade Fire nail every single piece of uncomfortable truth about suburban existence they uncover with rich lyrical imagery and stunning musical backdrops.

What resonated with me most about this album was the exploration of the conflicts that the suburbs create in those longing for something more. In "Suburban War", when Win Butler declares that " the music divides us into tribes/you choose your side/I'll choose mine", he perfectly sums up the external conflict that implicitly exists between those who have latched on to the suburban dream, and those who have grander visions outside the postcode of their upbringing. "All my old friends/they don't know me now" is the consequence of choosing sides in the "suburban war", a difficult truth that one faces when ones view of the world no longer mirrors those of your neighbours and friends.

As this album edges towards its conclusion, Régine Chassagne laments that "maybe the world is so small/that we can never get away from the sprawl". This is a depressing epiphany she is having: as our cities become bigger and more expensive and as children and the demands of family life encroach, suburbia becomes the inevitability we must face.

However despite the somewhat melancholic tone of The Suburbs, this is not a depressing album. Rather, it actually reinstates your faith in the album as an artistic medium. Instead of merely being a collection of singles, there is a clear thesis running through this album that ties every track together into one large collective reflection on suburban life, and the crises one has when they ask themselves: is this all there is? If you were brought up in the suburbs and have asked yourself this question, this album is essential.