This semi-apocalyptic number is the title track of Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire's third studio album. Recorded in Montreal and New York,
The Suburbs was preceded by a 12-inch single containing this song and "
Month of May."
Band members Win and Will Butler stopped by US radio network NPR Music for an interview in which they explained that the album title was inspired by their upbringing in Houston, Texas. "Will and I were born in a really small town in California, on the Nevada border," Win explained. "Maybe 50 people on the side of a mountain. We moved to the suburbs of Houston when we were young. Being a very young child, it's like going to Mars or something. The blast of hot air when you get off the plane at Houston. Just trying to talk about some of the feeling [on the album]." He added: "A lot of my heroes from Bob Dylan to Joe Strummer were suburban kids who had to pretend they were train-hoppers their whole lives. Talking about an experience and not make-believe is what we're doing on The Suburbs."
Arcade Fire and director Spike Jonze collaborated on a short film inspired by this song. Filmed in Austin, Texas, according to Rolling Stone, the video is centered around a cast of teenagers in a story of "friends growing apart," which echoes the theme and lyrics of the track.
The whereabouts of the suburban house on the album cover is a closely guarded group secret. "All I can say," said Will Butler to Q magazine, "is that the car in the driveway belongs to a friend of ours, Tyler, who's now our guitar tech."
Songs can be triggered by a simple act. In this case Win Butler was sent a photograph of an old school friend of his, who was standing with his daughter sitting on his shoulders "at the mall around the corner from where we lived." Said Butler: "The combination of seeing this familiar place and seeing my friend with his child brought back a lot of feeling from that time. I found myself trying to remember the town that we grew up in and trying to retrace as much as I could remember."
At the same time, other Arcade Fire band members of a similarly suburban origin across Canada had revisited their childhood environs and, in some cases, found there was not much left: buildings were boarded up, if they still existed at all; new roads and rivers had magically appeared, altering the landscape that now only existed in faded photographs. When they reconvened, this was the first song they wrote. Said Win: "We started working on the song, and once that started to sound like music it felt like we were making an album."
Win Butler explained to Mojo magazine that the album title relates to his and younger brother Will's young life in the commuter belt. Said Butler: "Will and I grew up in Woodlands, a suburb in Houston, Texas. We were there for 10, 12 years, and I wanted to encapsulate the feelings I had of growing up at that time in the lyrics.
It felt important to describe accurately the experience. It wasn't about making a moral judgement, for me it was about truth-telling, describing the exact feelings I had. I also wanted to write about right now, and that sense of foreboding of apocalypse, which always seems to be there in our records. Somehow suburbia and an apocalyptic outlook are related."
The Suburbs was Arcade Fire's first ever UK #1 album. In topping the chart they became the first Canadian act to achieve peak position in over three years, Avril Lavigne's The Best Damn Thing previously reached the summit in April 2007. Also Arcade Fire are only the second Canadian group ever to top the album chart, Nickelback being the other one.
The Suburbs won the 2011 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Arcade Fire became the first album of the year winner not to have a Billboard Hot 100 hit on their resume since American comedian Vaughn Meader in 1963.
The Suburbs won both the Album Of The Year and Alternative Album Of The Year prizes at the 2011 Juno Awards. The Montreal indie rock collective also went home with the Songwriter of the Year and Group of the Year gongs.
Win and Will Butler have strong musical roots. Their grandfather, Alvino Rey, was a famous big-band musician and inventor of the pedal steel guitar and their grandmother, Louise Rey, was a member of the Kings Singers. Win Butler told UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph: "Our family is super-musical, there's nothing less shocking than being a musician. It would have been shocking if we'd become accountants."
The Suburbs won the 2011 Polaris Prize, which is voted on by Canadian music critics each year. In some respects it was a surprise as the Polaris grand jury has a reputation of going against the grain and snubbing commercially successful records. For instance, Arcade Fire's second album, Neon Bible, lost out in 2007 to Patrick Watson's Close to Paradise and in 2010 Karkwa's Les Chemins de verre was given the award in competition against higher-profile artists like Broken Social Scene, Owen Pallet and Tegan and Sara.
Still on edge from a shooting that occurred at Fort Hood just months earlier, residents of Austin, Texas, panicked when they saw "soldiers" in the streets during the video shoot and called 911. Those soldiers were actually played by crew members wearing wool masks which, combined with the high temperatures, made many of them sick. While most of the band wasn't present, Win Butler and Regine Chassagne did make cameo appearances as police officers.
