14.

Arcade Fire
The Suburbs

It’s perhaps very unfair of me to be so resoundingly disappointed by an album this good. For all of my unhappiness with The Suburbs, it still has managed a respectable 14th position on the list (a list that a number of albums that I really like didn’t make at all). As with Darwin Deez, this placing may have been artificially elevated somewhat by an exceptional Reading Festival headline performance, but – in any event – 14th place means it can’t be that bad, or, indeed, ‘bad’ at all. The piano stomp of ‘The Suburbs’ is vintage Arcade Fire, while tracks like ‘Month of May’ (Queens of the Stone Age anyone?) and ‘Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)’ show different – and utterly excellent – sides to the band. Best of all is ‘We Used to Wait’, with its simple critique of modern isolation and gratification. Yet, in the end, I just don’t like this record anywhere near as much as either Funeral or Neon Bible. Maybe it was crushed under the weight of my expectation (undoubtedly one of my most anticipated records of the year). I can’t really put my finger on it, but it has just never found a place in my heart in the way this band’s two previous records did. An excellent album of course – they’re too talented for it not to be – but something is missing. Fingers crossed for album 4...