Arcade Fire: The Suburbs

Label: Merge

And...they're back! Montreal's most popular export since poutine finally comes through with album No. 3, a meditation/dissertation on the particular state of ennui that plagues the Western middle classes. Even at the lofty perch they've worked their way to -- as of this writing, the streets of NYC are covered in posters announcing the band's sold-out dates at Madison Square Garden (!) -- Arcade Fire remain mercurial, willing to inspect the lives of not only Joe and Mary Q. Bourgeois (on the ringing "Modern Man") but also holding the mirror up to their own fans on "Rococo." Those songs might best sketch the thematic outlines of The Suburbs, but they aren't the actual best songs; try the nicely 70s-ish "City with No Children" (which has the simplest and possibly best melody on the album), the airy and dramatic "Deep Blue" and "Suburban War," which seems closest to what might be the band's own vantage point and which builds to a prototypically rousing Arcade Fire climax. There are a lot of promises broken and unfulfilled within the songs on The Suburbs, but the band itself keeps renewing its own. (Bosco)