10 Most Overrated Indie Rock Albums Of All Time
2. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
The Canadian rockers ascended to the mainstream and the stadium circuit by virtue of their much lauded third record. It simultaneously shouldn't have taken this long and shouldn’t have happened with this album, one of the least inspiring and least inventive collections of songs they’ve thus far put out.
Arcade Fire’s first two albums showed a major band in the making, with songcraft equal parts idiosyncratic and ambitious. On The Suburbs, they maintained that sense of scale, but for long stretches ditched much of what made them so interesting. The title track is boring, plinky plonky rock. “Rococo” is a bizarre sideswipe at scene kids, and “Month Of May” and “Modern Man” two bog standard guitar tracks.
There are undeniably moments of brilliance, particularly “Sprawl II”, completely different from anything else on the album and not coincidentally the best by a long way. “Ready To Start” and “City With No Children” are typical uber-sincere epics, but they’re not a patch on similar tracks from previous records.
It’s also so unnecessarily long. It’s not fair to have a dig at a band for trying to achieve something great, but The Suburbs feels like such a brazen attempt to escape from the indie platform - and to be fair, it worked.