That was surprisingly good. I loved Funeral back in the day, and didn't really give a lot of attention to their other records. Neon Bible was a bit painful to listen to. This is another story; the album is somewhat more coherent than Funeral, the songs tighter, the atmosphere nice, enough tension throughout the whole album to keep my attention up. The downside is that it sounds less "indie" and more "pop" and clean, but that's pretty OK due to the overall quality.
I was all prepared to shrug my shoulders at this album - pretty standard, middle of the road indie stuff from Canadian rockers Arcade fire, with a loose sort of concept theme of life in the suburbs, but one track made me sit up and listen. Month of May is a certified banger - a solid Krautrock beat and even a nod to the Ramones with a ‘1, 2, 3, 4’ lead in, and some great lines about ‘kids all standing with their arms folded tight’. I started listening a bit more closely to the lyrics, and there’s some nice stuff in here about run down shopping malls and soulless housing estates patrolled by police chasing kids on bikes, where you can’t even recognise the house you grew up in without looking at the numbers on the door. The last but one track is Sprawl II, which is a great 80s style vaporwave pastiche leading into the final section about the Suburbs. Malltastic!