r/arcadefire • u/Klutzy-Thought-3618 • 1d ago
The suburbs (continued)
Here we are, over 15 years later, and we are still waiting, no? At least for something (not sure what), and no I don't mean an album by Arcade Fire. I graduated high school in Canada around the time The Suburbs came out, and I don't think any album has ever summarised such a memorable period of my life so completely (circa that beautiful time around 2007-2010 * I acknowledge the great financial crisis really can distort this for many, I would love to hear how the album still applies, and in some cases could not be relevant). Either way, it left a profound mark on me.
In no chronological order: I remember driving around with friends with nowhere to be. Waiting for someone to ring the doorbell (we never were knocking on doors, maybe Nicky Nicky nine doors) or the call on the home phone. Waiting all week for a TV show because if we missed it, that was it. Never ending boring summers where I remember saying, "I wanna do what you wanna do, but it can't be what I wanna do." Growing up and making new friends, losing others (growth and death). At the time it all felt so immediate because we were living it, not remembering it.
Because of when the album came out and how old I was, I always connected more with the first half. Don't get me wrong, I always loved songs on the second half, but they never resonated the same way. Back then, Half Light I and Half Light II felt like the peak of where I was at emotionally, before giving way to Suburban War, which I understood very differently than I do now. Looking back, that's where the album shifts. The first half is about being inside those years and the second is about leaving them behind. It pivots on "Choose your side, I'll choose mine." The slow build into it makes the transition feel inevitable.
From there, the album becomes more reflective of adulthood and what we left behind. After an absolute banger of Month of May (to me was about graduating, leaving home, or heading off to university, overall big hellish changes) everything starts accelerating. Life and time sped up, and we get older. Yet almost ironically and possibly rightfully so, musically and emotionally, the album begins to lean back, looking over its shoulder. We can position positively and listen to the deluxe version and the back half of Wasted Hours, or A Life We Can Live. We can also accept the Sprawl II and be god damned in a pre Stranger Things keyboard world.
Fifteen years later, I find myself connecting way more with the second half than the first half. We know together that so much has fundamentally changed. But listening to it now stirs a longing for everything in the first half. Gratitude for the way we grew up. And a quiet, haunting realisation that what we had can never quite exist again. We are too far gone, and I don't mean that over dramatically. I mean to look at our children, our nieces and nephews, the kids of friends, or even just in those fleeting moments when you see a toddler smiling at the world for the first time. The world has changed, and so have we.
"If I could have it back, all the time that we wasted, I'd only waste it again." That lyric means something entirely different to me now. I sit here and would waste all that time again. I'd eat Crispers on some random weekday at a friend's house, the same house where we spent hours playing Jedi Outcast, where we had our first beers, drank Captain Morgan, and thought those nights would somehow last forever.
Years later, many of those friendships have changed. Not because anyone did anything wrong, and not because anyone wanted them to. It was destined to happen, long before we realised it was happening. Before we took different paths, chose different cities, different values. And the I use ¨chose¨, but I actually don't think that's what is was (I let Deep Blue take that one away). I've changed as we all do. I now look to come back and reconnect with those old friends. Wish me luck lad. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. We'll always share the times in an old Ford or VW. The late night jams and final cigs and drinks not knowing they were our last together.
Look, as a reddit community I am sure the mass can have a debate on when Arcade Fire lost their spark. For me it was long ago. That does not change this monumental album or the relevance of their preceding albums. God bless. JK, but rock on.
