new music from Arcade Fire - "Speaking in Tongues" and "Culture War"

The music video for "The Suburbs" was taken from a film which Spike Jonze made for Arcade Fire entitled “Scenes From The Suburbs”. It includes these two new songs which very much fit with the general feeling of the band's third record. "Speaking in Tongues" features David Byrne (of Talking Heads). The songs were played for the first time today on Zane Lowe's radio show, listen below:

Arcade Fire - Speaking In Tongues by ListenBeforeYouBuy

Arcade Fire - Culture War by ListenBeforeYouBuy

This should tide fans over until the band releases the deluxe version of their epic album The Suburbs on June 27th.

Arcade Fire win Album of the Year at the Grammys

not that I care, but it's still very awesome for them, and The Suburbs, which I love

bonus: THIS is hilarious.

We Used to Wait

I'm sitting on my floor, tea in hand, as The Suburbs spins along on my record player, breaking my heart with every revolution. I'm trying to muster up the words to describe the whirlwind that has taken over my life the last few months, but I can't quite explain it.

Two and a half months ago, I gave up blogging. I was being pelted with dozens of promo emails a day, and spreading myself too thin, trying to do justice to any band I felt was worthy of our time. I was also struggling in my day to day life, which at the time was overtaken by my preparation for my law school admissions test(s) amongst other things.

To put it quite simply, I lost sight of the things which matter most. The reason I love vinyl is it forces us to sit down and savour the music which we consume, to actively engage in our listening expenditures. I'm sorry to admit that I had neglected not only my vinyl collection but my own mental health as well. I stopped doing the things that gave me happiness.
Euphoria.

Music is my absolute favourite thing in the world. It has given me so much strength and solace for the last six years of my life; it has brought me into contact with hundreds of amazing people. It's been there for me through thick and thin and opened my eyes to countless realities and even more illusions.

This post serves a few functions. It marks the beginning of a new era, of a return to form. Quality will now and forevermore supersede quantity, both in the frequency of posts and the content itself. I promise to do my utmost to deliver the best music that I come across at any given time. I will not let writing about music become burdensome.

This post also venerates the perfection that is Arcade Fire's third album. Two days ago, I began reading a book called The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It is by and far the most delectable prose I've read in years. It's heartbreaking and sends electric shocks to every last nucleus of every atom of your body. Simply put, it's a novel that explores the disturbing psyche of the modernized person. It's a brutal expose of the harsh realities of how sick we are as a society. The Corrections, however, revolves around a family unit set in a suburban Midwestern town, and every time I tore my eyes away from the pages for a few seconds, all I could think about was Arcade Fire's stunning 2010 release.

"Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl"

If this seems choppy and strange, just take this: both the book (which resonates much in the same vein as Faulkner's work) and the album have given me invaluable insight on the very real fact that life is fleeting, and it has the potential to fall apart in a million different ways. In the end, what remains is how we chose to bide our time and how much enjoyment we derived from it.

Finally, I wanted to apologize for being a neglectful, shitty excuse for a music blogger. I never wanted to become just another music blog. This matters to me. Sharing music. It's the essence of my very being. I've found the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, and it all began with our shared love for music. At the end of the day, nothing else matters to me but the soft crackle of vinyl or a Radiohead bootleg that lulls me to sleep.

Arcade Fire - We Used to Wait [mp3]

new video: Arcade Fire - Ready to Start

EXCELLENT.

stream Arcade Fire's Suburbs on NPR

in case you haven't heard it yet, it's incredible.

stream it HERE

record review: Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Imagine spending hours constructing an elaborate path of dominos, winding yard upon yard in various loops and shapes. Now imagine a small crack in your window—letting in just the slightest breeze from the clear skies above. It’s May. The silence of the sunny afternoon spent in solitude has enveloped your being and you have become content with the inactivity of your surroundings.

Out of nowhere, a lightning bolt strikes. There is no storm. Just a single, vicious jolt of electricity directed exactly at the tiny fenestration in your wall.

There go your dominos. There goes your silence. There goes your ease.

Now let’s give this lightning a name.
The Suburbs.

There are a lot of words that my mind associates with Arcade Fire. Full, orchestral, baroque, warm, communal. On their third album, however, the band reinvents itself into a fascinating combination of apocalyptic and gothic. I hear “Ready to Start” and I think of Robert Smith. “Rococo” sounds exactly like its title: creepy, Romantic-era horror story, complete with spine tingling violins and layers of echos and repetition. The band falters when it emulates U2 (“City With No Children”; “Half Light II”) but quickly redeems itself with the snarkiness of “Month of May”, a song that cleverly juxtaposes urgent guitars with lyrics lamenting the prolonged difficulty of the songwriting process. But nothing compares with the menacing rawness of “Deep Blue”, a song that captures the band’s warnings about suburban complacency with frightening precision.

Highly recommended.
4.7/5

The Suburbs drops next Tuesday, 3 August

Arcade Fire announce tracklisting for third LP

I have not yet listened to any new Arcade Fire tracks, nor do I have the intention to. I've heard great things about them, but I'll listen to the album in its entirety when it drops (2 August, via Merge Records)

01 The Suburbs
02 Ready To Start
03 Modern Man
04 Rococo
05 Empty Room
06 City With No Children
07 Half Light I
08 Half Light II (No Celebration)
09 Suburban War
10 Month Of May
11 Wasted Hours
12 Deep Blue
13 We Used To Wait
14 Sprawl I (Flatland)
15 Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
16 The Suburbs (Continued)

if you wanna sample it, here is the title track:

Arcade Fire -The Suburbs [mp3]