15 Greatest Rock Concept Albums From The Last 15 Years

4. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

There's a lot of promise in each song from Arcade Fire's ambitious, hour-long concept album devoted to the ideal of suburban sprawl and its detriments to individuality. But, much like the subject matter it tackles, there's little room for bombast or explosiveness in the music as a whole. Sure, there are a couple of rockers ("Ready to Start" and "Month of May" rebel against the stagnancy of the album's pacing), but by and large, this is an album that rewards the listener's patience and willingness to be through a slow-burning, 20 mile per hour drive through grand statements and complex emotions. If that all sounds a bit pretentious, it definitely is. But the album doesn't get so wrapped up in those pretenses that it forgets how to tell an effective story. Because even though a fair bit of the melodies are eerily pleasant and unobtrusive (the old warning "it's too quiet" is apt), but they hadn't lost their ability to write a grandiose anthem, either, as "Empty Room" and "Sprawl II" prove. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Euj9f3gdyM