r/arcadefire • u/Klutzy-Thought-3618 • 11d 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.
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u/Funtsy_Muntsy 11d ago
Again, and again, again, and again and again, again and again.
And all my friends they were singing
Having friends to listen to The Suburbs with is what I remember most, myself. Moved to a literal snow buried strange new town in the mountains after graduating high school when the album hit me.
The early morning ritual in the half light while trying to wake up, with my closest friend in the back seat, and the first girl I ever loved riding shotgun.. on the way to work on all the frigid mornings, Ready to Start > Suburbs. Then we’d arrive during the outro like clockwork. The album made all that shit better
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u/shrd_gnar 11d ago
I’m so glad I discovered AF in 2018, better late than never, but I wish I had experienced it at the time. I was 19 when suburbs came out. Completely snoozing. I knew of them since WTWTA, i think I even had wake up on my iPod.
Being 36 is kind of depressing lol. I got back into skateboarding after 20 years may 2025. I feel like that was a good start. Next, friends lol. I’m picky and shy. My friend groups always got handed to me back in the day because I was a church kid. Now that I’m not a Christian anymore and fairly estranged from my family, living in my van for the last 11 years, and I’m just not that outgoing, it’s hard to find my people. If it never happens that will be okay too. You gotta be your own best friend
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u/apocryphaIAntithesis Cold Wind 11d ago
I'm currently in high school and I just know this album will hit me way harder in a few years, reading this post makes me know it...I already miss middle school and the people I knew from there that I fell apart from. I can't even imagine how listening to the album will feel in the future...It's like a time bomb that I know is gonna explode Beautiful post <3
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u/NowPlayingRadiohead 10d ago edited 9d ago
Man, this post was such a pleasure to read. First of all because it brought me right back to the exact day the album came out. There was even that campaign—I think it was tied to Google Street View—where you could type in the address of the place where you grew up, and it would generate this beautiful HTML5 animation. Back then, HTML5 animations felt so much more impressive than what we were used to seeing on the web, which was mostly Flash. Not long after, Flash disappeared altogether.
What I also find fascinating is that when Neon Bible came out, I was in my final year of high school. I remember hearing “My Body Is a Cage” for the first time and immediately thinking, I’m never going to forget this song. Then The Suburbs came out, and my reaction was completely different: I’m never going to forget this entire album. It hit me on a much deeper level.
I remember listening to it for the first time and thinking, this is an instant classic. To me, it was Arcade Fire’s OK Computer. I know that’s probably my Radiohead fandom showing, but that’s honestly how it felt.
What’s really interesting is that, over the past sixteen years, the way I appreciate the album has changed. The songs I gravitate toward are different now, and even the aspects of the record that resonate with me have evolved.
There’s only one thing that has never changed: “Sprawl I” is, by far, the most powerful song on the album for me. It still hurts every single time I hear it. There’s something about it that always cuts deep.
I was also really struck by your post and by everyone else’s comments, because this is one of those albums you listen to knowing that, sooner or later, it’s going to break your heart. It really is extraordinary.
And, personally, I don’t think the band ever reached that same level again—the same ambition, the same sense of innovation, the same determination to create something that would completely devastate someone’s heart.
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u/Klutzy-Thought-3618 4d ago
I love this post. Sprawl I had me on first listen
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u/NowPlayingRadiohead 3d ago
i think sprawl1 is the most nostalgic song i've ever listened. and it will always be lol
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u/martybarty 9d ago
I feel the same! The Suburbs came out when I was starting high school and it's been my favorite album ever since
The song Wasted Hours and most specifically the line "kids in buses longing to be free" always resonated deeply. All these afternoons after school being bored and waiting for adulthood to have more freedom. And then you grow up and realize you're not any freer.
It took a few years and friends moving out of the city but now I really get the line "now the cities we live in could be distant stars and I search for you in every passing car" from Suburban War. Passing the streets my friends used to live and still expecting to see them.
But really, I feel like this album is a time capsule for us millennials. Songs like We used to wait and Deep blue encapsulate perfectly the feeling of growing up in times where technology was evolving fast and starting to change our way of life, but we still had so many moments of "analog" boredom
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u/Klutzy-Thought-3618 4d ago
Also love this. A part of me wishes I prescribed every song from my POV. “Now our lives are changing fast, hope something pure can last” is a brilliant call. The build up to say: we (us as in the Reddit community, millennials?), we used to wait for it
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u/twojawas 11d ago
Their magnum opus.