Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs (33 1/3) - Softcover

Eidelstein, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1501336460 ISBN 13: 9781501336461

Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

An examination of the societal factors and artistic depictions through film and television that make the suburbs such a fascinating cultural construct, uncovering why the album creates such a relatable and universal sense of nostalgia

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Eric Eidelstein is a film/TV critic based in Los Angeles, and his work has been featured in Indiewire, Complex, Mic, Catapult, Brooklyn Magazine, and Backstage.

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The Suburbs 33 1/3

By Eric Eidelstein

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 2017 Eric Eidelstein
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5013-3646-1

Contents

Acknowledgement, viii, 
Track listing, xi, 
Introduction, 1, 
Who is Arcade Fire?, 7, 
What are the suburbs?, 17, 
Where do you kids live?, 27, 
What's up dog?, 45, 
Why do I have these headaches?, 59, 
Why are there people like Frank?, 71, 
Why are you so profoundly sad?, 85, 
Surely expulsion is not the answer?, 101, 
Should I move past the feeling?, 113, 
Filmography, 121, 
Index, 123, 
Also available, 125, 

CHAPTER 1

Who is Arcade Fire?

It was February in 2011 when Barbra Streisand took to the Grammys stage to present the award for album of the year. When she opened the envelope and announced Arcade Fire's The Suburbs she stumbled over the word "suburbs," as if, backstage, she had been prepped to declare other nominees Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, or Eminem as winners and was suddenly and inexplicably betrayed by the Recording Academy.

Arcade Fire were shocked too. Régine Chassagne, one of the Montreal-based septet's founding members, covered her mouth in awe while her husband Win Butler gave a quick, garbled speech. At 6 feet 4 inches tall, Butler towered over the microphone as he thanked the Quebec city for housing him and his bandmates, his family, and concluded with an awkward but endearing, "We're going to go play another song because we like music." Chassagne shouted her own brief thanks, but in French, and the band proceeded to close the ceremony with a stirring albeit ironic (again, they were closing the evening) performance of "Ready to Start."

Grammy viewers were confused. Despite having two very different critically acclaimed records under their belt — Funeral and Neon Bible — and a loyal indie fan base, the public at large (and most likely Grammy viewers) didn't know much about Arcade Fire, or at least didn't expect them to beat out Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Eminem, or even Lady Antebellum for the coveted award. They could not have imagined that it would go to some indie band with too many members to count.

Naturally, what ensued is what always ensues when a horde of people are confronted with a pop culture phenomenon: an internet meme was born.

Out of the frenzy came a Tumblr account called "Who is Arcade Fire?" — a viral site that poked fun at those confounded by this relatively unknown indie band's rise to mainstream fame. The site, still up even though it hasn't been updated since 2012, features intentionally poorly photoshopped JPEGs, digs at the losing nominees, and, most spectacularly, a gem of a tweet from Rosie O'Donnell.

"album of the year ? ummm never heard of them ever"

While it became popular enough to pick up attention from Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post, like all memes "Who is Arcade Fire" died rapidly, without an afterthought. Sure, it was succeeded by "Who is Bonnie Bear?" which similarly explored an indie band's transition to mainstream popularity after Bon Iver won the best new album award at the Grammys the following year, but the bit probably became hard to keep up when — two weeks after the Grammy win — The Suburbs leaped from No. 52 to No. 12 on the Billboard 200 list.

Overall, the meme's legacy may not be that significant (what meme's legacy is?), but the implications of Arcade Fire's win — especially considering they were by no means an overnight band but a group already respected for their small oeuvre — inevitably distinguishes The Suburbs from the band's earlier efforts.

One would think the Grammys propelled Arcade Fire into the public eye, but from the moment The Suburbs was released in August 2010, Arcade Fire were met with exceptional record debut numbers. The Suburbs debuted at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts, making it the second album of the year to come from an indie band to debut at the top spot. Vampire Weekend's Contra was the first.

In its first week The Suburbs sold over 156,000 copies — about 30,000 more than Contra. Eminem, who would later join Arcade Fire with his album of the year nomination, debuted in the number two spot of the year with 152,000 copies sold. It may not be feasible to enter the minds or the souls who crowded the Target and the Amazon sites to purchase the record, but something about The Suburbs must have resonated on a grand level — grander than either Funeral or Neon Bible, whose numbers, although not as impressive as The Suburbs, are still nothing to scoff at. They're not the first band to write about suburban anxiety, being young, but it's the way they do it, the way they are so raw with what the feel — this is what feels unique.

Arcade Fire arrived to the music scene with their 2004 debut record Funeral. As its title implies, the record is a meditation on death, grief, and how one is able to grow in the wake of tragedy. Funeral was inspired by several major losses: Chassagne's grandmother, Win and his brother Will's grandfather, and Richard Perry, another Arcade Fire bandmate's, aunt. Arcade Fire received raves for their highly personal and raw debut. Pitchfork's David Moore writes, "So long as we're unable or unwilling to fully recognize the healing aspect of embracing honest emotion in popular music, we will always approach the sincerity of an album like Funeral from a clinical distance."

Sincerity. From the get go Arcade Fire is distinguished by their contagious earnestness — even when they're at their bleakest — and their bold approach to diving into difficult, powerful, and extreme emotions headfirst. While the album received the warmest of reviews, including an A from Robert Christgau, the rawness of the record was off-putting to some. Even Christgau says, "And that's how the album goes — too fond of drama, but aware of its small place in the big world, and usually beautiful." It seems like an apt descriptor for all of Arcade Fire's endeavors. They make take on weighty subjects, but they're unafraid to go in headfirst, to let themselves explore and feel it all.

There's a truth to Christgau's "too fond of drama" caveat, particularly when lyrics like "If the children don't grow up / Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up / We're just a million little god's causin' rain storms / turnin' every good thing to rust" exist. The band's greatest fans would call lyrics like these visceral, central to Arcade Fire's schtick: bringing hard-learned truths about weighty themes like life and death to the surface. On "Wake Up," Will Butler's vocals appear strained, almost as if he's summoning forth a teenage version of himself — a boy with greasy hair who sings emo tunes about love and loss in his parents' garage — even though he's actually a grown up. The song also features a choir of supporting vocals, transforming the rather melancholic tune into an uplifting one, enough so that it caught the attention of Spike Jonze, who used the tune for the trailer of his film Where the Wild Things Are, a goose bumps–inducing adaptation of Maurice Sendak's classic children's book.

Arcade Fire's biggest critics would probably highlight how fantastical in a roll-your-eyes kind of way the band can be, how they lack any sort of subtlety or restraint, are all about the so-called drama. They're intense — their first album has a...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1501336460
• ISBN 13: 9781501336461
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 144
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland