Best New Music...so, they gave it like a 5.9?
Apart from the Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes-Eddie and the Cruisers-Jersey vibe already firmly established by Arcade Fire, Suburbs sounds more like Meatloaf and the Cure meet Roy Orbison and Wilco, perhaps (or whatever; like that makes sense). Twenty-five years ago this would've been like getting excited about Def Leppard. My sister did ("Pour some sugar on me, dude! Rock and roll! Smoke a bowl!"). That deserves at least a 6.0.
"Modern Man" is perhaps the ballsiest remake of "Jessie's Girl" in recent memory, but, it falls shy of reaching the dramatic heights and emotional exuberance of Rick Springfield's most notable, catchy melodies. It actually recalls the melody of "Lawyers in Love" too, but that song had a lot more to say. "Rococo" could be a failed Joe Strummer experiment with Asia or Men at Work during a regrettable bender with the wrong crowd. It does contain the record's best line though, "Oh my God, what is that horrible song they're playing?" Actually, that's giving it way too much credit. Strummer would have been a hell of a lot more interesting and less listenable than this fey crap. It could just be a bad song. My brother spent some time growing up in the Dayton-Springfield area. I bet he'd just call it "gay" (and not in the homosexual sense, so, quit judging non-Dayton-Springfielders). "Empty Room" gives you the sense that there is potential for this band. It's when Arcade Fire embraces their moodiness to create a Yo La Tengo, movie-like soundtrack aural vibe and get the fu#$ off of Jersey Shore that they hit their mark.
The rest of this sh#$ flat out suggs. If you enjoy the worst white-funk that Spoon has to offer, you might be able to stomach "We Used to Wait". "Sprawl I" is as ovewrought and full of margarine as Nick Cave . Yes, now it can be pondered: Is Nick Cave one of the ten most over-rated singer-songwriters of the past 20 or 30 years? Probably. What a fruitless, epic bore. "Sprawl II" sounds like Bjork's remake of Blondie's "Heart of Glass". Not bad; maybe the most listenable track.
Arcade Fire should probably just score soundtracks. There's a future in that: more mood and presence with the music and less interference from whitebread vocal performances and pandering lyrical shite on a road to nowhere. It's all they got and that's not so bad.
I give it a 6.0.
-Dickfork
_________________ People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events.
Last edited by thefiercelime on Tue Aug 03, 2010 2:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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