Ubran Sprawl

I am into the new Arcade Fire album The Suburbs.

My favorite song of this epic album right now is Sprawl II which can be heard above.

The album listens like a grand statement of narrative winding you through the urban sprawl on bikes. Ideas of nostalgia mixed with anger and fear for what really lies behind the white picket fences and manicured lawns of ticky tacky houses.

Some of the lyrics from Sprawl II that really stood out to me:

"Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock

These days my life, I feel it has no purpose

But late at night the feelings swim to the surface"

.....

"'Cause on the surface the city lights shine
They're calling at me, come and find your kind
Sometimes I wonder if the World's so small
That we can never get away from the sprawl
Living in the sprawl
Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains
And there's no end in sight
I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights'"

"It's a rare and thrilling example of the group stepping out of their musical comfort zone, an airy disco bounce evoking "Heart of Glass" that serves as further evidence of just how crucial the often underappreciated Chassagne is in tempering Butler's grimmer outlook." - Pitchfork.com

Much of the lyrics from the suburbs are from band members Win and William Butler's upbringing in the suburbs of Houston. Its kind of like Desperate Housewives meets Weeds combining the pain of wasting your time as an adult by romanticizing the wasted time of your youth.

So naturally for their single The Suburbs they had to go back to their home state to really capture their childhood essence.The Suburbs is actually part of a short film they wanted to corroborate on with Director Spike Jonze. A larger form of this work will be released called "Scenes from the suburbs"by Jonze sometime this month.

It was shot in Austin with local youth. The scene is average suburban kids loitering after school in their cul de sac neighborhood with the impending signs and feelings of war looming. They are just riding their bikes when the signs of darkness peak through the horizon. The video is vague as to what is actually happening and why these military trucks are all the sudden moving in. Its hard to tell who the bad guys are. Its reminiscent of the weirdness of MIA's Born Free. The kids are NOT ALRIGHT in this video as they soon turn against each other and beat each other up for a reason unbeknown to us the viewer. Both the Arcade Fire and Spike Jonz have been obsessed with what layers lie underneath the ordinary.