Montreal-based indie rockers Arcade Fire have a growing North American reputation. With The Suburbs they brilliantly mine our modern malaise through a look at suburbia, searching in the shadows of shopping malls to explore the themes of adolescence, affluence, and anxiety that make up our 21st-century wasteland. By using a tight concept-driven format, each of the album's tracks follows smoothly from the prior one, echoing repeated words and phrases to build an "anthemic" song cycle. The Suburbs is a masterpiece. (Merge Records)
