Arcade Fire Are Controlling Our Minds

The Eye Weekly review of Arcade Fire's Friday (June 11) show at Toronto's Music Hall has within it a fairly inaccurate assertion. Chris Bilton writes that the group's new album, The Suburbs, is riding a much smaller wave of hype than Neon Bible.

To that I would say, really? If you haven't noticed, Arcade Fire are in the midst of an unprecedented attempt to control your brain for the next two months — a self-produced assault on social media and Internet music publications that is designed to appear spontaneous, but couldn't be more tightly controlled.

It started back on May 15, when the band revealed the image of a postcard bearing a message that a single would be out soon. Five days later, they posted two snippets of "Month Of May" and "The Suburbs." Six days after that, they dropped the double A-side single in independent record stores.

That was followed by another message that the album was finished. Then an announcement of a tour. Then a round of secret/last-minute shows in Quebec and Toronto intended to produce a slew of crappy, fan-produced videos of the band's new songs that will only make you want to hear the studio versions more (or pay to see them for yourself).

The media has dropped plenty of ink on each one of these carefully prepared missives. Those articles have been tweeted, retweeted and posted on Facebook walls. This weekend's Toronto shows were almost entirely manufactured on those two social media sites (which might partially account for the fact that they both barely sold out).

I could go on and on, but the point, once again, is this: there will be an NY Times Magazine article on Arcade Fire if Arcade Fire want one.

You can see the next steps from here. A track list for The Suburbs will be released shortly, and that will dominate the music news cycle for another day. The group will talk to an extremely limited number of news outlets about their feelings on how Neon Bible's murky production led to The Suburbs' cleaner, crisper sound. Every outlet that doesn't get to talk to the band will scalp the best parts of those few interviews for their own audience.

And, finally (unless it comes out earlier because of the inevitable "leak)," when The Suburbs is finally released to record stores worldwide on Aug. 2 and 3, you will know so much about the album you will be able to taste it in your mouth.

This template will subsequently be followed — or should be — by The Strokes, Interpols and maybe even Radioheads of the indie rock world, bands with enough of a fanbase to pull it off.

There's a not-so-small caveat here. Arcade Fire are pulling it off so easily because they're the best of the bunch. As evidenced by this weekend's two Toronto shows, the material on The Suburbs (especially "Ready To Start," "Rococo," "Month Of May" and the title track) is worth the advance notice. Not all of it is as positively destructive as the peaks on Funeral ("Modern Man," "Suburban War") and some of it is as mundane as Neon Bible's "Ocean Of Noise" ("City With No Children"). But, if you like the band's music, you will be far from disappointed when you finally hear the new record.

The set lists for the two Danforth shows can be found here  and here.