"The Suburbs" or Me & Arcade Fire Down By The Schoolyard.

As some of you may already know, I've never been the worlds biggest Arcade Fire fan. Almost everyone I know seemed to gush themselves dry over 'Funeral' and 'Neon Bible' and I never really understood it. All I heard was bad sixth form poetry over the type of epic, bombastic music that always used to put me off listening to most English classical composers. I always just found it massively off-putting. It felt to me like they just all crashed in at once with huge sounding choruses to mask the fact that their songs weren't actually very good.

Then, this year, they released their third album. 'The Suburbs.'

I read reviews saying that it was a change of direction of sorts. That it was a toned down version of Arcade Fire. That by taking the subject matter of often ignored suburban areas (of America/Canada), they had ditched the bombast and created a more personal and involving album. Everything I read got me intrigued. I thought I'd give it a listen to see what it was like.

I love it.

I suspected I thought it would be good, judging from what I'd read about it, but I wasn't expecting to love it quite so much. The reviews were right. Gone is all the pomp and instead we have a very human sound. Songs you can relate to. Songs that invite you into them. Songs that make me start writing really pretentious sounding things about them.

Yes, I never thought I would say this, but the new Arcade Fire album is absolutely brilliant.

I said this to a couple of workmates who've always been big Arcade Fire fans and they both said the same thing. They can't get into it and they find it a bit boring. No offence to them, but this kind of backs up why I like it so much, because it doesn't sound like Arcade Fire. It sounds like like a fucking great band who've made a really REALLY good album.