my take on the suburbs by arcade fire

I probably shouldn’t even post this since everyone will hate me, but:

It’s not much more than a musically innocuous and lyrically embarrassing pop record. AF flirt with Funeral-era greatness in the title track (the only song on the album I can say at all approaches being “great” or even “very good”) and with self-derived blandness in “Rococo” and “Ready to Start”, but the record is mostly inhabited by pretty good but not spectacular songs like “Half Light I” and “Suburban War.” Overall, this makes it fairly solid musically, depending on how closely you’re listening, in spite of a few bad songs and some really bad track order decisions (the album is devoid of flow).

But I mean, seriously, “City with No Children” is one of the better songs on the album and it’s very little more than meh. By the time I make it to the 7th track, I’m so disinterested and out of it that it could turn into Funeral 2.0 and I probably wouldn’t even notice. The lyrics, meanwhile, are just plain stupid and bad (see: “Ready to Start”, “Month of May”). They’re poetically idiotic and philosophically immature, putting an awful, spiteful sentiment across the entire album that reminds me more of Terrell Owens than Ted Williams. 5/10?