Business Casual

03 Night By Night by Juan Guitaro

Fuck You

Sweet Memories

Damn good track utilizing vocal samples from The Four Tops' "Same Old Song", a personal favorite that hits the right note in this electronic re-imagining. Check out more from Hard Mix.

Hard-mix-memories by Juan Guitaro

Shabazz Palaces

Newly signed to Subpop, Shabazz Palaces got that old- school hip hop with that new indie twist. Simple, yet catchy beats, patient flow, takes me back to the days of Tribe.

Blastit... by subpop

Shabazz Palaces - 32 leaves dipped in blackness making clouds forming altered carbon by Juan Guitaro

Guest Review: The Suburbs

I've read many reviews on "The Suburbs" and this is hands down the most well-written and thoughtful one I've come across. Our guest columnist, we'll call him Esteban, cuts to the core of this classic American album. Enjoy

When I first heard that the Arcade Fire’s new CD was titled “The Suburbs”, and was purported to be “themed” (for lack of a better word) accordingly, I was admittedly skeptical. I often find that albums that attempt to confine themselves to a certain topic can end up vanilla, boring, and most of all, forced. However, Arcade Fire’s album is a welcome and shining exception, one that pleases as much for its “theme” as for its musical prowess.

“The Suburbs” has been touted as one of the biggest releases of the summer, and as such, I’m sure many people have heard of its basic premise of lead singer Win Butler’s remembrance of his childhood growing up in the outskirts of Houston. However, this description seems only adequate at best and downright misleading at worst. The album is much less descriptive of a specific set of experiences at a given place than an entire set of experiences that have occurred to various generations throughout America. In fact, the vibe that I get from the album is that it has much more to do with the process of growing up than it does one specific location. Butler weaves a rich tapestry of emotions that mimic the ebb and flow of generations leaving their hometowns before ultimately returning. The album starts out almost condescendingly, with Butler eager to escape his suburban life, and continues with an (almost guilty?) victorious feeling. As the songs continue, however, the mood shifts to almost fearful of the future before becoming progressively more nostalgic and even longing for the old days.

To accommodate the wide range of emotions and experiences that Butler lends his voice to is not an easy task, and I think accomplishing that is what distinguishes the music of “The Suburbs”. On a strictly musical note, I would have to say that “We Used to Wait” is among the most satisfying of the tracks on the CD. It is a taut, relentless track that in my opinion is the most interesting on the album. Probably my favorite compare/contrast to it would be LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” because of both songs’ constant, staccato pianos. Where LCD uses the piano as more of a subtle yet extremely important background for other instruments to execute an entire-song long buildup, Arcade Fire uses the piano as its overbearing focal point that other drums, guitars, and voices are structured around. And yet with these differences, both songs end with only the same exact piano introduction that they begin with.

While there probably aren’t any true individual masterpieces on the album, as a whole they work together to become a sum much greater than the parts. Probably my favorite example of the tightness of the album is the palpable difference in mood between the first and last tracks, “The Suburbs” and “The Suburbs (continued)”. In the former, when Butler sings “Sometimes I can’t believe it, I’m moving past the feelingss again”, he gives the impression that he “can’t believe it” because he’s enthralled to be finally gone and rid of the suburbs (and the youth that he associates with them). Conversely, in the final track, which shares almost the same name and exactly the same lyrics, Butler seems to be in disbelief that his childhood (and with it, his glory days) are gone. To truly appreciate this change, however, it’s necessary to set aside an hour and listen to the album straight through from start to finish. The transitions of the emotional feel of one song to the next will literally walk you through an entire story of growing up in America, and will no doubt have you reminiscing on your own youth.

The Suburbs by Juan Guitaro