#365songs (95 / 365)

Hard to put an Arcade Fire song up here after the allegations against the main lead singer Win Butler, but this one's sung by his apparently now-ex-wife Régine Chassagne and... well, I want to acknowledge all that stuff but not get bogged down by it too much, because this is still a really good song.

I'm fond of Arcade Fire's breakout album Funeral but The Suburbs is probably the one that sticks with me more: I did, in fact, grow up in the suburbs, and so the deep ambivalence about them in this album does just hit different than the very young-feeling Funeral. "Sprawl II," one of a few two-part songs, is by far the most ecstatic five minutes of music on The Suburbs and feels like a well-earned culmination of its themes: sprawl and alienation, authority and escape, darkness and light. Despite the exuberant synths, there's a plaintiveness to Chassagne's voice that really brings everything home... plus, I always love it when a band really nails a climactic penultimate track as long as they don't totally whiff it on the last one. The Suburbs's last track is really just a brief reprise of the title track, more a coda than a song. It works as a gentle comedown that leaves "Sprawl II" the spotlight it deserves.