Thursday, March 31, 2016

THE ARCADE FIRE "The Suburbs" CD [2010]

Teenage David Byrne-like voice tells of Suburban Warfare, tearing down the houses they built in the Seventies, Subdivisions vs Subdivisions, an Endless New Stalingrad fought in Cul-de-Sacs, Brady Bunch House Strongpoints, all the adults soon dead, kids on bikes rounded up by mysterious "Cops" and "Re-Educated" in Deluxe Concentration Camps. San Francisco's "gone," the narrator is nostalgic and keeps re-visiting the ruins of the Universal Suburban War, he can't find his house (presumed destroyed) and some kind of population explosion post-war pushes he and his friends into the New Sprawl, endless, outward from Dead Cities, and a New War several times every day, until a woman-girl finally sings a song about how we will never escape from the Sprawl. Staggering.