There was a underbelly to Arcade Fire's second album, Neon Bible, that I wasn't quite willing to admit. When Arcade Fire appeared out of nowhere with Funeral in 2005, it read as effortless; a debut that took seemingly tired rock n' indie tropes and distilled them to their pure nerve endings. But more attractively it seemed to spring from a place that did exist, a lyrical, emotional landscape far beyond dudes in a studio working out tempos and budgets and reverb patches.

By the time Neon Bible arrived, Arcade Fire seemed aware of their hyperbole. If true, that album remains an admirable and eminently listenable slab of perfectly executed (branded?) indie rock. But, man: some of those 'worldy' lyrics are clangers. Not to mention that such a preoccupation served to uproot Arcade Fire's fantastical, mythical, shape-shifting world and plant them in the boring ol' present. While time has emboldened the classy perfection of cuts like 'Ocean Of Noise' and (the then already old) 'No Cars Go', the more bombastic, self-aware tunes like 'Intervention' and 'Windowsill' seem already a relic of the bands adolescence.

So it's with a hint of trepidation that we get into the band's third act, the forthcoming and wildly anticipated The Suburbs. The two tracks we've heard so far seem to confirm that the album looks like being a synthesis of the first two: the worldly attempts at broad brushstrokes on Neon Bible, but with a focus on the insular towns and domestic relations of the band members childhood towns - aka a stand-in for the fantastical 'neighborhood' of Funeral. Which seems, at first glance, a little like revision. Didn't they nail the yearning, ethereal sentiment on Funeral? Is this sucking more blood from the same moody stone?



Following on from band's posting of two tracks from the album - 'The Suburbs' and 'Month of May' - now here comes another duo, 'Ready To Start' and 'We Used To Wait'. (Culled from radio play, the quality here isn't quite 100%). It's easy to imagine 'Ready to Start' and 'We Used To Wait' working next to the previously heard 'The Suburbs' (less so than the sub-nu-Pearl Jam grunt of 'Month of May', but we'll press pause on those thoughts until the context of the album). While 'The Suburbs' most closely resembles the band's B+ Funeral-era offcut 'Cold Wind' in both subject and tone, 'Ready To Start' is firmly of the Neon Bible-era: "businessmen drink my blood / like the kids in our school said they would", all dark swoops and burbles of synth. And as with most things they touch, Win and Co. still manage to fashion a memorable chorus from just a nifty slight chord change.




Arcade Fire - 'Ready To Start'


'We Used To Wait' shares a similar tone with 'Power Out' from Funeral, albeit a far less frenetic kind. There's synth in there again, along with horns and - as with all four songs heard from the album so far - distant guitar drones rather than the signature orchestral flourishes that helped establish the band.



Arcade Fire - 'We Used To Wait'

Combined with a bunch of other forthcoming tracks we've heard from the band's recent live recordings ('Rococo', 'City With No Children', 'Suburban War', 'Modern Man') - and despite the nagging feeling that the wholly-contained world presented on Funeral was a debut fluke - colour us excited. If hoping that the band can step off the pulpit a little and re-connect.

The Suburbs is out in Australia August 2nd on Spunk.