The Suburbs versus Picaresque

Hard one! Both are bands that I picked for my original list, though in each case I chose a different album. Both bands hit the scene post-’99, as well as the albums, which makes them particularly apt for this contest, in my mind. And while I was hooked on Arcade Fire pretty much from the get-go, and my enthusiasm for the Decemberists has come only recently, it’s the latter band that’s been hitting my speakers more often these days.

Regarding Picaresque — I must confess that this was only the second album of theirs I actually purchased and listened to in its entirety. After grooving on The King Is Dead I made a Pandora channel that featured them and a rotating assortment of one or two other bands for variety, and playing that pretty much all the time for a six-month period. I had it in my head that all the earlier albums were artsy concept albums of interconnected tracks, and that KiD represented something of a departure with its discrete tracks more along the lines of a traditional pop album. But Picaresque also fits that bill pretty well. Its songs don’t necessarily hang together.

But what songs! “The Infanta” is a classic album-opener — no surprise that they frequently use it to open their live shows. “We Both Go Down Together” is a perfect fusion of their folksy and pop-sy sensibilities. “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” is a perfect gem of a revenge ballad, and one of my favorite of their songs, ever. And the lyrics! They’re all a cut above the words of mere mortal bands, of course. I love a band that makes me use the dictionary once in a while. I could go on and on about the perfection of the couplet “Meet me on my vast veranda / my sweet untouched Miranda” — the way the wink of the archness of the rhyme masks the ominous nature of the proposal.

It’s a fantastic album, so any talk of “down sides” must be couched with that qualification, but the worst thing I can say about it is that there are indeed a few tracks that I’ll remove from iTunes once I post this review, because I can generally do without them. “The Sporting Life,” “From My Own True Love,” and “On the Bus Mall” would be songs many a band would be proud to have made, but they don’t stand up well in the company of the other songs on the album.

The Suburbs is actually much closer to being a concept album the way I imagined that all Decemberists albums were until I actually listened to them. Even a scan of the song titles — all nineteen of them — conveys pretty succinctly a narrative of suburban sprawl and modern ennui. The lyrics aren’t as incisive or memorable as the ones on Picaresque, but combined with the multilayered music they create much more of an immersive experience. This is an album I want to just-listen-to, as opposed to only having-on. I love me that complex sound — listen to the chorus on “City With No Children,” the way the vocals and the the choral backing vocals and that driving bassline are layered on top of ambient keyboards. So cool — and that’s one of the more stripped-down songs on the album. One disappointment is that the strengths on the album are somewhat frontloaded: the Modern Man—>Rococo—>Empty Room—>City With No Children—>Half Light I&II progression is transcendent, but the back half slows down, picks up a little for Sprawl I & II, and then just kind of peters out with the “Suburbs” reprise.

I have made it this far without having decided which album is going to win. They are both so good. The tilt is going to go based on my gut response, just having listened to them back-to-back yet again. And it’s going to come down to vocals. I like Win Butler’s voice, and I really like all the female vocals that harmonize and back him on almost every song. Colin Meloy’s voice, I … tolerate. It’s got the quirk factor going for it, and quirk is nice, but beauty is better. I might choose differently on a different day, but for this particular Deathmatch, advantage: Arcade.

WINNER: The Suburbs