9. Here We Go Magic - Pigeons - Secretly Canadian
10. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs - Merge
Like the great Grizzly Bear before them, the songs of Here We Go Magic’s sophomore album are songs I lived with for months, a whole year practically, before its release. I was lucky to see Luke Temple’s band four times last year (three opening for the Griz, and the first time opening for Griz side project, Department of Eagles) and it was all about those new songs not on the self-titled debut. Songs like “Collector” and “Surprise” getting trapped in my mind, weeks and months at a time. When I met Temple, I exclaimed excitement over the new jams, and curious to see what the new album would sound like. He said that it would sound like the first album, and that it wouldn’t all at the same time. He was right. The tape hisses everywhere on the studio version of “Collector”; the melancholy staunch of “Casual” is a melody casually drifting in and out of one’s psyche. The infinite beat of “Moon” is buried under the vocals and guitars, and even those are all but mute. The guitars go off like the best REM albums of the 1980s; Temple has found his own Temple within this line-up, this band, and this album.
Who knew Arcade Fire would change the game again? A 16-song concept album about growing up in the ‘burbs, the Canadian crew have made their best album (better than Funeral? Probably.) Win Butler said songs were influenced by Depeche Mode (“Half Light” / “Sprawl II”) and Neil Young (everything else). The title track opens with the haze and malaise of a late summer afternoon spent on the porch, retelling tells of yesteryear. “So can’t you understand / I want a daughter while I’m still young” and then the strings perk up giving a yearning for the listener’s own childhood. The 4/4 beat and ominous guitar of “Ready To Start” before that chiming lead really leads me to believe that it’s going to break in to “You Can’t Hurry Love” (the Phil Collins version). But who knew Butler’s wife Regine would get the album’s shining moment? With “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains”, the band redefines themselves by writing Siouxie Sioux’s best song ever. It’s such a grand finale before that reprise at the end. And lest we forget the ever so awesome single “We Used To Wait”. They’re up for Album of the Year at the Grammys, an award I would wish they’d win but know they won’t. But they deserve it, they can almost go wherever they want now and make any album they wish - and I hope that they do.
