I understand that this man basically created the genre and greatly respect his artistry, but it simply isn't for me. Throughout the entirety of what was a challenging Thursday morning listen on my way to the office, I found myself hoping ever more strongly against hope that, somehow, an earlier version of his bombastic 80s hit "Living in America" featured on the album. To my horror, I was instead met with a ten-minute long song without any real variety to its structure which set me up very poorly for the long day ahead. It gets docked a star for the all-too-audible wails from the live crowd in the studio, and then another for Brown being a prolific wife beater.

Not a folk fan but that's class

Insert Alan Partridge shrug here

This is a good album featuring a solid array of Arcade Fire work; I would stop short of calling it a great album, but there's much more going on here than in the extremely morose Radiohead effort we had to suffer yesterday. My personal rating for this would be four stars, but I'm giving it five instead to correct the group average which has been ranked by tasteless messrs Robert and Mouldy Mike. More of this, please!